Approximately 1.2 million family forest landowners (FFOs) manage nearly 37 million acres of forestland in five New England states. This means that efforts to sustain and conserve forests in the region are contingent upon short- and long-term management decisions of these owners. We applied the transtheoretical model of behavior change to understand which activities and behaviors FFOs have pursued in relation to forest legacy planning. We conducted a regional mail survey of 2500 FFOs across Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. Findings indicate that the majority of FFOs are preparing for or are currently engaging in beginning-level legacy planning decisions while few are thinking about nor planning for more advanced-level decisions. Findings from three stepwise multiple regression models also provide support for predicting a substantive amount of variance in FFOs’ decisions to engage in beginning-level and conservation-oriented planning decisions.

在新英格兰的五个州中，大约有120万家庭林地所有者（FFO）管理着近3700万英亩的林地。这意味着维持和保护该地区森林的努力取决于这些所有者的短期和长期管理决定。我们运用行为改变的跨理论模型来了解FFO与森林遗产规划相关的活动和行为。我们对缅因州，马萨诸塞州，佛蒙特州和纽约州的2500名FFO进行了区域邮件调查。调查结果表明，大多数FFO正在准备或正在参与初始级别的遗留计划决策，而很少有人在考虑或计划更高级别的决策。