Forest insurance policy improvements based on the analysis of foresters’ behaviour in insurance decision situations

近年来，森林自然灾害的破坏性越来越大，而且根据气候变化情况，预计还会进一步增加。目前，政府措施大多侧重于在灾害发生后向森林所有者提供财政支助，例如直接付款。然而，鉴于极端天气增多，这可能会加重国家预算的财政负担，而林业工作者则没有动力采取积极主动的行动。因此，必须重新考虑目前的财政支助制度，将林农的风险私有化。保险可以发挥关键作用，但在许多国家，森林很少有保险。只有少数研究分析了公共方案对保险需求的影响。在本项目中，我们的目标是通过在实验环境中增加林农的偏好来扩大范围。考虑到林农偏好的实验研究非常罕见，特别是在保险需求的背景下，本项目致力于开发森林经济学的实验方法，其目标如下：1.评价林务员的风险和时间偏好以及对森林企业目标的偏好2。分析立木保险的需求以及个人偏好和社会人口因素（包括企业家背景）的影响。为完善政策方案提供建议，以建立一个有效和高效的立木保险市场因此，该研究项目提供了关于理解林农保险决策的主要研究结果。这些调查结果有助于提出改进政策的具体建议，并为进一步讨论这一问题奠定了坚实的基础。

Natural disasters in forests have become more damaging in recent years and are expected to further increase according to climate change scenarios. Currently, governmental measures mostly focus on providing financial support, such as direct payments, to forest owners after disasters. However, in the light of more weather extremes, this could lead to a heavier financial burden for national budgets, while foresters are not incentivized to take proactive actions. Therefore, the current financial support system has to be reconsidered with regard to privatizing foresters’ risks. Insurance could play a key role, but in many countries, forests are rarely insured. Only few studies analysed the effect of public programmes on insurance demand. In this project, we aim to expand the scope by additionally including foresters’ preferences in an experimental context.Bearing in mind that experimental studies on foresters’ preferences are very rare – especially in the context of insurance demand – the project pursues to develop experimental methods in forest economics by the following objectives:1. Evaluating foresters’ risk and time preferences as well as preferences regarding forest enterprise goals2. Analysing the demand for standing timber insurance and the influence of individual preferences and socio-demographic factors including the entrepreneurial background 3. Providing suggestions on the improvement of policy programmes in order to build an effective and efficient standing timber insurance marketThus, the research project provides central findings on the understanding of foresters’ insurance decision-making. These findings allow for delivering concrete suggestions on policy improvement and form a profound basis for further discussions on this issue.