A pine barrens is an open, fire-dependent ecological community once prevalent in sandy areas of northern Wisconsin (USA). Efforts to restore pine barrens on public lands have been hampered in part because their character does not conform to many people’s ideals of Northwoods forest scenery, challenging land managers on how to balance social and ecological goals. We studied the manager-relevant attributes of a pine barrens restoration site to predict nearby landowners’ landscape preferences and to ascertain whether their preferences differed. We designed a discrete choice experiment where different levels of six attributes of pine barrens were systematically manipulated in visual choice scenarios and presented to landowners (N = 542) of small, family forest parcels in an online survey. Half of the respondents read an informational statement about barrens ecology and management prior to judging the scenarios for visual preference, while everyone answered questions about their knowledge and experience with barrens. Results showed dominant preferences for scenarios indicating a Northwoods “scenic aesthetic,” with smaller openings, higher tree density, and lower fire intervals and understory shrub density. Latent class and a priori segmentations revealed smaller subgroups of landowners had higher preferences for more open treatment designs tending toward an “ecological aesthetic,” and while previous experiences at pine barrens helped to distinguish subgroups, prior knowledge and information did not. Implications are discussed for restoring pine barrens in a social context.

松树贫瘠的土地曾经是开放的，依赖火的生态群落，曾经在美国威斯康星州北部的沙质地区盛行。在公共土地上恢复松树贫瘠的努力受到了部分阻碍，因为它们的性格不符合许多人对诺斯伍德森林风光的理想，对土地管理者提出了如何平衡社会和生态目标的挑战。我们研究了松树荒地恢复点的管理者相关属性，以预测附近土地所有者的景观偏好，并确定他们的偏好是否不同。我们设计了一个离散选择实验，在视觉选择场景中系统地操纵了六个不同等级的松树贫瘠属性，并通过在线调查将其呈现给了小型家庭森林地块的地主（N = 542）。在判断视觉偏好方案之前，有一半的受访者阅读了有关贫瘠生态和管理的信息性声明，而每个人都回答了有关贫瘠知识和经验的问题。结果显示出对诺斯伍德的“风景美学”场景的主导偏好，这些场景具有较小的开孔，较高的树木密度，较低的着火间隔和林下灌木密度。潜在类别和先验划分显示，较小的地主亚组更倾向于采用更开放的处理设计，以趋于“生态美学”，而松树贫瘠的先前经验有助于区分亚组，而先前的知识和信息则没有。讨论了在社会背景下恢复松树贫瘠的含义。