Bioeconomy perception by future stakeholders: Hearing from European forestry students
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SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF A FOREST-BASED BIOECONOMY
Bioeconomy perception by future stakeholders: Hearing from European forestry students Mauro Masiero , Laura Secco, Davide Pettenella, Riccardo Da Re, Hanna Berno¨, Ariane Carreira, Alexander Dobrovolsky, Blanka Giertlieova, Alexandru Giurca, Sara Holmgren, Cecilia Mark-Herbert, Lenka Navra´tilova´, Helga Pu¨lzl, Lea Ranacher, Alessandra Salvalaggio, Arnaud Sergent, Juuso Sopanen, Cristoph Stelzer, Theresa Stetter, Lauri Valsta, Jozef Vy´bosˇt’ok, Ida Wallin Received: 23 December 2019 / Revised: 10 June 2020 / Accepted: 31 July 2020 / Published online: 13 October 2020
Abstract This article provides useful information for universities offering forestry programs and facing the growing demand for bioeconomy education. An explorative survey on bioeconomy perception among 1400 students enrolled in 29 universities across nine European countries offering forestry programs was performed. The data have been elaborated via descriptive statistics and cluster analysis. Around 70% of respondents have heard about the bioeconomy, mainly through university courses. Students perceive forestry as the most important sector for bioeconomy; however, the extent of perceived importance of forestry varies between countries, most significantly across groups of countries along a North–South European axis. Although differences across bachelor and master programs are less pronounced, they shed light on how bioeconomy is addressed by university programs and the level of student satisfaction with this. These differences and particularities are relevant for potential development routes towards comprehensive bioeconomy curricula at European forestry universities with a forestry focus. Keywords Bioeconomy Education Forest-based bioeconomy Forestry students Future stakeholders Perception
INTRODUCTION The transition to a bioeconomy can take many forms and will need wide social as well as political-institutional Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01376-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
changes shaping possible future action (Goven and Pavone 2015) while requiring transformational efforts (Dietz et al. 2018; Lewandowski 2018). In order to face such changes and transformations, and to avoid that bioeconomy remains an ‘‘elite master narrative […that…] does not depend on popular acceptance, acquiescence and even awareness’’ (Birch et al. 2010, p. 2905), public opinions and social preferences shall be taken into account. For involving stakeholders at a societal level in discussions and decisionmaking processes, their perceptions about matters that directly affect their well-being need to be investigated (Mustalahti 2017). While a number of studies were conducted on bioeconomy, bio-based products, and associated technologies, research has only recently started to focus on interactions between actors involved in a bioeconomy (Hodge et al. 2017; Lewandowski 2018; Stein et al. 2018) and about
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