Typological comparison of two different forestry accountancy network datasets

Freiburg im Breisgau

2010

S. 73-82

8 Abb.,4 Tab., 18 Lit. Ang.

Artikel aus einer ZeitschriftUnselbständiges Werk

200166408

Since 1980 standardised operating figures from private and communal forest enterprises in the Forestry Accountancy Networks (FAN) of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV) and the Forest Research Institute of Baden-Württemberg (FVA) have been available. These economic indicators are used for inter-enterprise comparisons along with many other uses in science and political consulting. In order to compare economic aspects of enterprises it is necessary to pool them into comparative collectives. So far datasets have been grouped according to the size of the enterprise, tree species, annual cut and growth region for forest operation analysis. With this approach it depends on the skills and experience of the arranger as to whether the comparative collectives are appropriate or not. This paper shows that statistical methods are suitable for generating more objevtive or matched groups for inter-enterprise comparisons. The vast number of variables (operation figures) used in FANs are predominantly metric scaled and furthermore interdependent. In such cases, statistics offer a suite of useful methods (e.g. factor analysis, cluster analysis, correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling). The databases came from singel-enterprise datasets from 1998-2004 from the FAN of small private forests of 5-200 ha and from the FAN of BMELV (communal and private forest enterprises with more than 200 ha). SAS and SPSS statistical software packages were used. The methods has proven to be capable of identifiying types of enterprises. It could be shown that rather high aggregated operating figures have to be drawn upon to reach a significant classification. It als became apparent that a reasonable separation of groups can be seriously influenced by extreme years when calamities occurred.