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Forests cover almost one half of European land. Therefore, land taxes, including taxes from forests, are essential for a municipality's income. The land tax system is implemented on different levels, mainly nationally and locally. Therefore, many land tax features are settled by federal law, and others differ according to the local tax administrators. The objective of the paper is to compare the current laws and principles and the implementation process of forest land in Slovakia and Portugal. We have selected countries from different geographical areas of Europe. Even though the forest compositions and forest ownership differ, we aimed to identify whether the forest land tax systems can be similar. We analysed the legislation and strategic documents on the national level that helped us to describe the land tax system and its general features (e.g. taxpayer, tax rate, tax base, exemption options, tax period, or penalties). In both countries, the national tax law governs the tax implementation and settles any basic processes related to tax collection. The municipalities have the right to revise both the tax rates and exemptions. The results also show that forest owners in Slovakia have more options for tax exemptions than in Portugal.

Water-related ecosystem services of forest land are essential for human well-being. Their provision is related to forest management practices that forest owners and managers apply. When these preferential management practices increase the operating costs, they should be paid/compensated by users of these services. The research focused on identifying the prerequisites of the innovation systems to support payments for ecosystem services (PES) in Slovakia. We analysed the structure, relationships, and functions of the innovation system as monetary and non-monetary incentives, cooperation support and risk mitigation. We collected data using a standardised questionnaire sent out to stakeholders from forestry, nature protection, water management and civil society. The data was processed with simple descriptive methods commonly used in social studies and survey data processing. The information about the potential supply and demand of water-related ecosystem services were obtained from forest owners and managers makes the PES development in the future more feasible. Results revealed that when developing PES schemes, the coordination of stakeholders should follow settled legislation rules at the national level, which still need to be included. Furthermore, the innovation system should provide mainly monetary incentives to providers of ecosystem services.

The exact determination of the rotation period is still a current and important essential issue of forestry. It attracts the attention of forest economists, managers and owners worldwide, not only of forest economists but also of forest managers. The rotation period is defined by physical, technical or financial parameters of forest management. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between the biological and the economic optimal rotation period. A fundamental challenge in forest management is the need for appropriate determination of the rotation period. The primary interest of our research was to compare the effective legislation for the determination of the rotation period in the Czech Republic and in the Slovak Republic. Scientific methods such as document analysis and questionnaire survey were applied. The results of the legislation analysis and other related documents were compared with the expert opinions of the relevant stakeholders. Those who affect the decision process related to the problem and those where are "affected" by the problem were involved in the study. Results show that respondents do not agree with the regulation of rotation period according to effective law. Moreover, they consider it as not usable as the conditions in forest ecosystems have changed recently, which is not considered in the legislation.

An important area of activity of the Technical University in Zvolen is the generation of innovations and their transfer into practice. A SWOT analysis was used to analyse this area to identify the most important internal and external factors affecting the quality of knowledge and technology transfer. As the biggest strength of the university, its human resources were identified, i.e. its staff and students who bring new innovative ideas. Contrary, the weakest point is the lack of human resources, i.e. the university's insufficient capacity to transfer knowledge and technology into practice. An increasing interest in "green" technologies is becoming an opportunity for the university. The threats that most affect the Technical University in Zvolen are the persistent distrust of the business sector and the ineffective legislative framework for regulating technology transfer at the national level, which does not provide uniform legislation concerning the issue (see Klinka, 2020; 2021). Therefore, the university should pursue a diversified management strategy to improve technology transfer. This strategy is based on supporting the university's strengths and eliminating external threats.

This paper deals with the comparison of the general public perception and the opinion of state forest managers on image of the state forest enterprise. The research was organised during the period 2015-2019. One group of respondents involved all managers of 23 sub-enterprises of state forest enterprise Lesy SR. The other group consisted of 384 respondents representing the general public residing in the Banská Bystrica region. Structured questionnaire with one open and 16 closed questions was applied for data collection with a help of electronic means. Collected data were processed with descriptive (particularly frequency analysis) and two-dimensional statistical methods. The results of the image inquiry aimed at three issues: (i) perceptions of the forest management effectiveness of the state versus non-state forest enterprises, (ii) perception of marketing strategy and its tools of the state forest enterprise, and (iii) comparison between public awareness/experience with public relations activities of the state forest enterprise.

In practice, employees of research institutions quite often encounter factors that support or, conversely, hinder their involvement in the process of knowledge and technology transfer. The identification of these factors is therefore key to ensuring the successful and effective knowledge transfer at national as well as regional level. In this paper, we focus on the identification of supporting and limiting factors in the knowledge and technology transfer process from the perspective of employees of the Technical University in Zvolen.

Fire is considered one of the major natural hazards that damages European forests and causes losses for forest owner. The forest fires endanger the financial stability of forest enterprises, which may cause their economic decline. One possibility how to cover these losses is to insure forest land against this kind of specific risk of forest land management. The aim of the present paper is to analyse possibilities of forest fire insurance for forest owners and enterprises in the Slovak private insurance market. The market analysis was based on document analysis of general terms and insurance conditions of chosen private insurance companies and interviews with insurance agents. The results show that forest owners and enterprises have only few options for forest property insurance concerning the specific risk of forest fires. Only one commercial insurance company provides such forest fire insurance product for forest owners. This insurance covers material damage to forest land and timber damage.

Transfer of technology and scientific knowledge into the practice is key factor of sustainable economic growth and competitiveness. Business activities of universities applied research and knowledge transfer in cooperation with economic field and society could bring them additional financial sources and prestige. Starting from these considerations, the goal of the paper is to analyse status of technology and knowledge transfer in Technical University in Zvolen, with emphasis on identification of most used forms of knowledge and technology transfer.

Innovations represent the engine of the business and economic. This is particularly relevant to the traditional sectors such as forestry and forest-based industry that are expected to play an important role in the future steps oriented towards meeting the sustainable development goals. The main aim of this study is to analyse the stakeholders’ perceptions of the innovation trends in the forestry and forest-based sectors by using a Q-methodology. This research addressed three groups of respondents in Slovakia, whose task was to subjectively assess innovative trends in the forestry and forest-based sectors. Based on the results it can be concluded that the innovation trend in the forestry and forest-based sectors will be oriented towards the technological progress focused on the increasing efficiency of wood processing and increasing the usability of waste material as well as the trend of increasing development of innovations in the forest recreation services.

Thanks to their knowledge and experience, researchers have a particular ethical responsibility beyond legal obligations. They should follow a set of ethical rules and requirements of scientific integrity that are obligated for all professional scientific and academic workers. This article aims to provide an overview of strategic documents dealing with scientific integrity and ethics in research. We also discuss research integrity and ethical practices concerning knowledge and technology transfer and present specific examples.

Universities are a driving force for the innovation process in the economy, as they are not only active in teaching or scientific research, but also in the transfer of knowledge into business practise. The process of transferring knowledge and technology into practise can be challenging and is influenced by several factors that affect its quality and potential success. For this reason, this study focuses on the analysis of the cooperation between the Technical University in Zvolen and business practise from the perspective of business practitioners. Therefore, we assessed the interest in cooperation with the university and devoted ourselves to identifying supporting and inhibiting factors that occur in the transfer of knowledge into practise. The results obtained indicate a low willingness of economic agents to participate in the survey. Informal and formal information exchange as well as educational activities turned out to be the most frequently used, with interest in these forms of knowledge transfer also from the perspective of possible future cooperation.