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There is an increased emphasis on the diverse meanings and values of forests as well as the heterogeneous private forest ownership, both of which have proved challenging in policy, planning, and management of forests. This thesis contributes social science insights to the field of forest research related to social and emotional dimensions of forests and forest ownership. Concepts from the academic field of human geography are used to provide understandings of the varied ways in which private forest owners and rural residents may form and interpret their relationships, meanings, feelings, values and practices related to forests and forest properties. A qualitative research approach was conducted in Sweden through the use of face-to-face interviews with 51 private forest owners and focus-group interviews with residents of the Dalasjö village in Vilhelmina municipality.      

The thesis is based on four individual papers. Paper 1 shows how geographical distance and non-residency do not automatically explain variations in forest owners’ feelings of closeness to or distance from their forest properties. Drawing on the concept of ‘sense of place’, the results suggest that non-resident owners may have close emotional ties to their forest properties as a result of their particular social and ownership contexts, such as family links or being second-home owners. In Paper 2, an analysis of ‘gendering’ in private forest ownership – understood as the ongoing social practices of ‘doing’ gender differences in the interaction with space, place and bodies – establishes both dichotomised and varied perceptions and experiences of gender differences and practices in forest ownership. It underlines that gender differences were sometimes ‘done’ as a means of ‘othering’ women, but also as a means of negotiating or resisting the gendered forest ownership and the production-oriented context of forestry in Sweden. Paper 3 demonstrates the importance of private forest owners’ feelings connected to their ownership and the place of their property in their relationship to public use and public planning interests. A conceptual framework of private forest ownership was developed in this paper consisting of ‘property rights’, ‘ownership feelings’ and ‘sense of place’. The paper highlights the need to take into account social and emotional dimensions of forest ownership when addressing public interests in relation to private land. With the case of Dalasjö, Paper 4 explores how ‘forest social values’ may be understood and applied in a rural setting. The findings reveal diverse and context-specific, place-based forest social values, as well as challenges in how to translate and apply forest social values in a planning process.