A large proportion of private forest owners in Slovenia are inactive, meaning that they manage their forests very rarely or not at all. Considering that private forests prevail, their effective management is crucial for achieving the objectives of forest policies at both the EU and national levels. One possible approach to increasing the utilization of the natural potential of private forests is to encourage business networking among inactive private forest owners and their business cooperation with forest service providers. The research is based on the results of a survey conducted among inactive private forest owners in the Forest Management Area Maribor (n = 100). Among the main reasons for inactivity, respondents highlighted the lack of need to manage their forests, lack of time, insufficient knowledge, and lack of motivation, as they are often not financially dependent on their forests. Only 14% of the surveyed inactive private forest owners believe they have sufficient knowledge for careful forest management, while as many as 55% of respondents express a desire to manage their forests more actively within the next ten years. The most frequently stated forest management objectives were preserving forests for future generations, protecting water resources and soil, and using forests for recreation. More than one third of inactive private forest owners are willing to cooperate with forest service providers in the implementation of forest operations or through joint market activities. The most suitable forms of business cooperation for them appear to be timber purchase at the roadside and contracting harvesting and timber extraction services. The results confirm that inactive private forest owners represent a highly heterogeneous group; in this study, three groups of inactive private forest owners were identified and linked to the sociological model of Sinus Milieus. The largest share of inactive private forest owners belongs to environmentally oriented inactive private forest owners (53%), followed by socially oriented inactive forest owners (25%) and traditional inactive private forest owners (22%). For a more efficient utilization of the natural potential of private forests, it is first necessary to systematically identify inactive private forest owners and appropriately inform and educate them about the importance of forest management and the possibilities for business cooperation.
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