Bureaucratic financial burdens on privately owned forest companies: Results of a case study in three German federal states

Throughout private forestry enterprises in Germany, the problem of exceedingly high costs resulting from efforts administering bureaucracy derived from all sorts of state regulations is a well-known and present obstacle to competitiveness. Nevertheless, financial burdens for private businesses in forestry due to bureaucratic measures have never really been analysed to a degree, clarifying or at least defining their various origins or subdivisions. This study aims at examining bureaucratic financial burdens in its three major components relevant to private forestry, which were expected firstly in costs due to the passing-on of state tasks, secondly in costs due to state initiatives and thirdly in costs due to the companyʹs own initiative. As an empirical tool, a written survey was carried out in the federal states of Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse in 1997, questioning a total of 353 private forestry companies with a minimum forest area of 200 ha each. Relations between descriptive elements of forestry companies and their influences on the amount of bureaucratic costs are presented and quantified.