Katja Lähtinen

Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke) · Bioeconomy and Environment

The importance of sustainability information on the social license to operate (SLO) in forestry–sawmilling businesses is on the rise. In addition, the applicability of existing regional and national corporate responsibility (CR) measurement systems for implementing collaborative production chain assessments is low. This study assesses collaboration...

In the context of urban development and construction, professionals working as urban planners have a key role in influencing the implementation of national building codes at the local level, and can thus influence the use of material-based opportunities to promote sustainable development. With growing recognition of wood material as an alternative...

Acknowledgement We are grateful to the following funding bodies; Academy of Finland (ORBIT project, 307480) and Finnish Innovation Agency Tekes (Grant 642/31/2016). We wish to thank the informants that participated in the data collection, and M.Sc. Juho Pöyhönen for his excellent research assistance. 2 Collaboration and shared logic for creating va...

Multi-storey wood building (MSWB) provides options to enhance sustainable development. Despite this, no comprehension exists on how consumer perceptions differ regarding (1) willingness to live in modern houses made of timber or (2) prejudices against living in houses made of wood, although they play important role in marked demand of MSWB. In this...

In transitioning to a renewable material-based bio economy, growing public and industry interest is apparent for using wooden multistory construction (WMC) as a sustainable urban housing solution in Europe, but its business implications are not well understood. In our study, we evaluate, which internal and external factors of competitiveness are sh...

Metsäsuhde vaikuttaa olennaisesti kokemukseen metsien käyttömuotojen legitimiteetistä ja tulevaisuuden metsien käytön suunnitteluun. Ihmisen luontosuhde kehittyy elämän varrella ja koostuu muun muassa elämänkokemuksista, tiedoista, taidoista ja sosiaalistumisesta. Luonto- ja metsäsuhde on kullekin henkilökohtainen, mutta samanaikaisesti suhde luont...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide information on how citizens in nine countries across Europe perceive egg product quality and the importance of a product's sustainability attributes (animal welfare, country of origin and production method) in egg purchases. Design/methodology/approach The data were gathered in 2021 via an online sur...

Land-use planning has been identified as an important tool in pursuing sustainability by guiding the construction and development of our built environment. Sustainability action places large requirements for municipalities to develop and introduce priorities in their planning. Land-use planning system in Finland relate to regulation and decisions o...

People have different beliefs about the environmental impact of forest products. This quantitative web-survey study investigated public beliefs in Finland and Sweden about the environmental and climate impacts of using wood as a construction material for multi-story buildings. It was conducted with consumer panels reflecting the average populations...

Using wood in multistory apartment construction (WMC) has a climate-positive advantage with buildings acting as long-term carbon storage. Business ecosystem (BE) development around WMC is needed to accelerate the adoption of wooden materials in the conservative construction industry. As the business actors around WMC are essentially different from...

This study investigated people’s requirements for multi-story housing attributes and preferences for apartments in wooden-structure versus steel/concrete-structure multi-story buildings. Data came from an online survey conducted in Finland and Sweden that screened for respondents who expressed a preference for living in an apartment, as compared wi...

Climate change places great pressure on the construction sector to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions and to create solutions that perform well in changing weather conditions. Our study explores citizen perceptions on wood usage as a building material under expected mitigation and adaptation measures aimed at a changing climate and extreme weath...

Animal welfare is an essential part of the sustainability of animal production. While low-input farming, such as organic animal production, is often considered animal-friendly, several ways to enhance animal welfare in low-input animal production exist. However, currently there is little information on how farmers and other supply chain actors view...

Wood products are seen globally as an important solution to substitute nonrenewable materials in the construction sector to enhance the life cycle sustainability of buildings. Globally, the most prominent opportunities for sustainability change in housing production lie in multistory residential buildings, which are built mainly of concrete, steel,...

Climate change sets high pressures on the construction industry to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the carbon storage properties and potential to use renewable resources efficiently, wooden multi-storey construction (WMC) is an interesting alternative for the construction industry to enhance sustainable development combined with the aesth...

Climate change places great pressure on the construction sector to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions and to create solutions that perform well in changing weather conditions. In the urbanizing world, wood construction has been identified as one of the opportunities for mitigating these emissions. Our study explores citizen opinions on wood usag...

While climate change and biodiversity loss have exposed humanity to major systemic risks, policymakers in more than 40 countries have proposed the transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy as a solution to curb the risks. In the boreal region, forests have a prominent role in contributing to bioeconomy development; however, forest-based...

It is uncertain how the traditional forest sector can respond to the changing political environment, evolving markets, and global environmental problems. This study focuses on the development of forest-based bioeconomy (BE) in Finland from the perspective of three forest-based value networks (wooden multistory construction, fiber-based packaging, a...

So far, consumer housing values have not been addressed as factors affecting the market diffusion potential of multi-storey wood building (MSWB). To fill the void, this study addresses different types of consumer housing values in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden (i.e., Nordic region), and whether they affect the likelihood of prejudices agains...

Evaluation of product attributes and the overall quality significantly affect consumer purchasing decisions. Previous studies on wooden products have mostly addressed wood product quality from technical viewpoints, while largely disregarding environmental, social, and economic aspects in the assessments. Therefore, knowledge on how sustainability a...

Consumer acceptance of new bio-based products plays a key role in the envisioned transition towards a forest-based bioeconomy. Multi-storey wooden buildings (MSWB) exemplify a modern, bio-based business opportunity for enacting low-carbon urban housing. However, there is limited knowledge about the differing perceptions consumers hold regarding woo...

Multi-story wooden buildings are hailed as a favorable means toward reducing the embodied energy of the construction sector. However, the sector’s path-dependent nature hinders acceptance of using wood in multi-story construction. As a result, research predominantly focuses on examining the perceptions of construction professionals to identify mean...

Despite the academic research on servitization in the recent past, few studies have investigated how the increasing role of services as a change in production processes affects the evolving bioeconomy, pursuit of resource efficiency and improved sustainability. The servitization of manufacturing companies, the blurring of the lines between the manu...

For many consumers, buying a home is the most important purchasing decision they will ever make. Although consumer needs are well met in the detached house business, particularly compared to the multi-story house business, deficiencies still exist. These deficiencies are caused not only by companies’ strategies, but also by institutional factors di...

In the emergence of bioeconomy in the European Union, sectorial boundaries are becoming blurred: renewable energy production is becoming increasingly integrated with the forest sector via the use of biomass for energy. The implementation of corporate responsibility as a firm- and industry-level strategic issue has become increasingly relevant in bi...

"To sleep outside and hang out with friends" The Influence of Scouting on the Forest Relation of Children and Youth

New innovations are called for to renew the European forest sector into bioeconomy. However, little research exists on how the industry innovativeness is publicly perceived. Using data collected with an online questionnaire in four European countries, we investigate perceptions related to forest sector innovations on 13 current and new bioeconomy-r...

Natural and business ecosystems are complex and dynamic service systems that interact through the utilization of ecosystem service offerings for human well-being. Currently, natural and business sciences have not developed a shared and common set of service-based terms or concepts for discussing ecosystem service offerings in the process of value c...

Since the early 1990s, there has been hope that the uptake of certified forest products would ensure more sustainable forest management and also deliver business benefits along the value chain. Our study applies a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) to model an e-commerce purchase in the case of multiple products with various attribute and certificati...

Purpose of Review Stakeholder communication plays an important role in enhancing the societal sustainability and business acceptability of the forest sector. The purpose of this study is to present the current state of forest sector communication research with its stakeholders at different hierarchical levels of sustainability (i.e., societal, sect...

Despite their evidently different assumptions and operationalization strategies, the concepts of Circular Economy, Green Economy and Bioeconomy are joined by the common ideal to reconcile economic, environmental and social goals. The three concepts are currently mainstreamed in academia and policy making as key sustainability avenues, but a compara...

This paper investigates public perceptions related to forest ecosystem services (ES), which have been identified as one of the key topics in forest sector communication. ES represents a prime example of an issue that merits more in-depth analysis. In this study, we (I) evaluate the views of the general public on the importance of forests contributi...

The rise of wooden multistory construction (WMC) in the Nordic countries has turned out to be the most evident construction-related new business opportunity in the emerging bioeconomy. Based on earlier literature, the future growth prospects for the rise of WMC are rooted in the concerns regarding environmental issues, as witnessed in a plethora of...

Executive Summary The objective of the W3B-project was to create and demonstrate innovative and cost-efficient ways for communicating towards stakeholders the relevance of the European forest-based sector and its products for a sustainable bio-economy. Therefore, the project mapped the state of communication analyzing the website content of 80 comp...

The use of network-based business models has been brought up as a means of creating com-petitive edge in the tightening global competition. In practice, adopting network-based models has not yet become common in the wood products industry. The objective of this study is to gain better understanding of types of network-based business models using a...

Natural and business ecosystems are complex and dynamic service systems that interact through the utilization of ecosystem service offerings for human well-being. Currently, natural and business sciences have not developed a shared and common set of service-based terms or concepts for discussing ecosystem service offerings in the process of value c...

Natural and business ecosystems are complex and dynamic service systems that interact through the utilization of ecosystem service offerings for human well-being. Currently, natural and business sciences have not developed a shared and common set of service-based terms or concepts for discussing ecosystem service offerings in the process of value c...

The concept of ecosystem services is emerging within the global environmental and development discourses as a leading contemporary narrative, together with related strategies, agendas, tools and practices. In addition to its role in public policy, this concept has implications for the private sector as well. Little knowledge exists, however, on the...

Purpose – Forest industries affect cultural sustainability profoundly, but little information exists on integration of cultural sustainability aspects into their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) management. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines comprising assessments of economic, ecological and social aspects are one of the most compreh...

Communication is an important tool in maintaining legitimacy and acceptability of forest sector operations and activities and expectations by the general public on the forest sector conduct in Europe are in general very high. Despite this, there i scarce research in cross-national contexts on how forest sector sustainability is communicated to the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the content and determinants of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures within chief executive officer (CEO) letters and social media tools. Design/methodology/approach – Published CEO letters and the presence of global pulp and paper manufacturing companies in the social media...

There is a lack of studies analysing the variation in competitive advantage and operational strategies among foreign subsidiaries in the wood product sector, especially in the emerging country context. This research attempts to enhance an understanding of phenomenon with a special focus on foreign subsidiaries in the furniture industry in Vietnam....

Purpose – China is a leading country in the production, consumption and exports of value-added wood products. Despite this fact, the sources of competitiveness and the existing strategies in the Chinese wood products companies have not been profoundly studied in an international context. The purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps by exploring...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify links between the components involved in ecodesign orientations (EDOs) and the integration of ecological criteria into Scandinavian wooden furniture industries. The purpose of identifying these links is to recognize possibilities and gaps in wooden furniture product development and branding opportu...

This study examined the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability practices and perceptions of small and medium-sized forest products companies in North Carolina (NC). Research was carried out in two parts: First, a content analysis of 22 company websites was implemented. Second, twelve semi-structured in-depth interviews with compan...

Cultural sustainability has become a much discussed topic in the forestry and bioenergy sectors. However, there are not many indicators available for measuring cultural sustainability. In order to identify indicators for the assessment of the cultural sustainability impacts of wood-based bioenergy in eastern Finland, two-phased expert interviews we...

In this chapter, we explore the strategic orientation* in the global forest sector by first studying strategies for competitive advantage (CA) from three strategic perspectives— proceeding from the market-based view grounded on Porter's generic strategies and five forces of competition to the resource-based view (RBV) and finally to the stakeholder...

The publication summarises the results and conclusions of the research project Advanced Solutions for Recycling of Complex and New Materials. The aim of the project has been to create an understanding of the future development needs of waste recycling and management by conducting an in-depth analysis of five selected waste value chains.The chains a...

The resources of currently dominant fossil fuels are limited, and their use causes greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, the public interest within the European Union has changed toward using renewable energy. Finland’s forest industry is one of the world leaders in producing and utilizing wood-based bioenergy. Hence, it is of interest to evaluat...

N. 2011. Network co-operation as a source of competitiveness in medium-sized Finnish sawmills. Silva Fennica 45(4): 743–759. In the Finnish sawmill industry, inter-firm collaboration has often been brought up as a means of creating a competitive edge in global markets by achieving economies of scale. Accord-ing to the resource-based view (RBV), a f...

Katsauksessa selvitettiin Suomen metsien eri käyttömuotojen aikaansaamien hyötyjen taloudellista arvoa ja sitä, millaista yritystoimintaa liittyy näiden markkina- ja ei-markkinahintaisten hyötyjen käyttöön. Lisäksi kartoitettiin aihealueen tutkimiseen saatavissa olevia tietolähteitä sekä tietojen saatavuuteen ja vertailukelpoisuuteen liittyviä onge...