Forests provide immense goods and services to both local and regional communities. The USDA Forest Service’s, State and Private Forestry program administer multiple landowner assistance programs aimed at helping private forest owners while supporting the continued supply of ecosystem services (e.g., timber harvesting, recreation, carbon sequestration and storage). The two landowner assistance programs assessed in this study are the Forest Legacy Program (FLP) and the Forest Stewardship Program (FSP). A majority of the nation’s forests are privately owned, many of which are facing deleterious impacts like wildfires, invasive species, development pressures, and other adverse effects from climate change. The goal of this project is to (1) quantify the economic contributions emanating from lands participating in FLP and FSP in the conterminous US and (2) quantify and value the carbon sequestration on lands participating in FLP and FSP in New England. IMPLAN is an input-output modeling system, used in Chapter 1, that estimates how money flows through a regional economy. The results from the IMPLAN analysis suggest that FLP lands in the conterminous US contribute an estimated 4,560 jobs and $306.8 million in value-added from timber harvesting and recreation. Further, FSP lands contribute an estimated 27,700 jobs and $1.8 billion in value added from timber harvesting and recreation. Using Forest Inventory and Analysis carbon sequestration data and the social cost of carbon, the results of chapter 2 suggest that, in New England, FLP lands sequester 147,000 metric tons of CO2, or $7.5 million in aboveground CO2, per year. FSP lands in New England are estimated to sequester 82,000 metric tons of CO2, or $4.1 million in CO2, per year. Quantifying and estimating the economic and ecosystem service contributions emanating from lands participating in FLP and FSP provide a framework for understanding the total benefits associated with these programs (e.g., supporting rural economies, impacting climate change and the global carbon network, etc.).

The background of our thesis is the fact that properties and their related industry have a big negative impact on our environment. Since the real estate business is an important part of how the society is constructed, environmental solutions and sustainable real estate development can contribute to positive climate changes globally. The last decades have shown an increasing number of green properties, however the proliferation on the Swedish market is still slow. Existing research describes different benefits and motivators that should encourage investments in environmentally certified properties among real estate companies. Benefits that are established are for example lower energy- and maintenance costs, lower vacancy rate, an improved company image and increasing market value. We believe there is a gap of information considering how the real estate companies experience that these benefits are generated from a green building, as well as how motivators have impacted on the companies’ investment decisions. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to explain how different motivators affect real estate companies to invest in environmentally certified properties. To answer the purpose of our thesis, we have created four different hypotheses based on existing research which includes an improved result, increased economic profitability, improved company image and the opportunity of incentive programs and economic contributions. The hypotheses of our study have been tested with a quantitative method, through a survey. Collected data from our study has been analysed through a multiple regression analysis, where the four motivators have been analysed against the real estate companies share of investment decisions in environmentally certified properties. The conclusion of this thesis is that none of the hypotheses reached statistical significance and therefore the collected data cannot prove any relations between the motivators and companies’ investment decisions. Although, through our study, we have been able to identify both differences and similarities between theoretical claims and the result from our study. Even though statistical relations cannot be confirmed, the survey has collected descriptive data which contributes to a general view of how Swedish real estate companies today evaluate environmentally certified properties and how they are motivated to invest in these properties.