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，预计根据气候变化情景将进一步增加。目前，政府的措施主要侧重于在灾害发生后向森林所有者提供财政支持，例如直接付款。然而，鉴于更多的极端天气，这可能会导致国家预算的财政负担加重，而林农则没有动力采取积极行动。因此，必须重新考虑目前的财政支助制度，使林农的风险私有化。保险可以发挥关键作用，但在许多国家，森林很少得到保险。只有少数研究分析了公共项目对保险需求的影响。在这个项目中，我们的目标是通过在实验环境中额外包括林农的偏好来扩大范围。考虑到关于林农偏好的实验性研究非常罕见- -特别是在保险需求方面- -该项目力求通过下列目标发展森林经济学的实验性方法：评估林农的风险偏好和时间偏好以及对森林企业目标的偏好2。分析常备木材保险的需求以及个人偏好和包括创业背景在内的社会人口因素的影响提出改善政策方案的建议，以建立有效和高效率的常备木材保险市场。因此，研究项目提供了了解林农保险决策的核心发现。这些调查结果使我们能够就改进政策提出具体建议，并为进一步讨论这个问题奠定了深刻的基础。

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.