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Abstract
Taking responsibility refers to balancing economic, social, and environmental
concerns. Based on a short literature review about corporate responsibility and
research about small scale forest owners this paper discusses small scale forest
owners’ responsibilities for achieving a true sustainable forest management as
well as stakeholders’ expectations on the owners, and potential conflicts between
owners and stakeholders and between stakeholders. Results from an explorative
study are reported. Interviews have been made with ten small scale
forest owners, Swedish Forest Agency’s local office holders and a representative
from WWF. The results show that the interviewed small scale forest owners
take economic, environmental and social responsibilities but stress their personal
economic responsibility. However, no conflict exists between economic
and environmental responsibilities. The economic benefits for the owners for
taking more environmental och social responsibility are small. The interviewed
stakeholders expect the small scale forest owners to take responsibilities but
that the weight the interviewed owners put to their wishes is low. This is an explorative
study and a broader study is needed for testing the presented hypotheses.