Silva Fennica

Table 1. Composition, abbreviation and number of interviewees in each focus group (total n = 43).
Interview	Composition of the focus group	Abbreviation	Number of interviewees	Location of the interviews
1	Inexperienced forest owners	Inexperienced owners	7	Joensuu, SE Finland
2	Experienced forest owners	Experienced owners	6	Oulu, NW Finland
3–6	Field-level forest professionals	Professionals	5–7, in four separate discussion occasions	2 occasions in Joensuu; 2 occasions in Oulu
7	Administration-level extension designers	Designers	4	Helsinki (the capital city), southern Finland

Table 2. Activities and events that can enable forest owners’ knowledge exchange and co-construction (a-h) and description of their elements.
Activities and events led by extension organisations	Actors and groups (Potential Communities)	Type of knowledge exchanged (Potential Domains)	Type of action (Potential Practices)
a) Forest days	Active forest owners, forest professionals	Getting information about topical forest issues	Lectures and excursions
b) Courses	Forest professionals and specific groups of forest owners, e.g. female owners	Learning about the topic of the course, e.g. use of clearing saw	Lectures, possible hands-on exercises
c) Projects	Specific group of interested forest owners, forest professionals, other interested groups, e.g. local entrepreneurs	Learning about the topic of the project, e.g. bioenergy	Lectures, excursions and discussions with other participants
Activities and events led by forest owners
d) Board of local FMA	The elected forest owners	Advocating the interests of local private forest owners	Regular meetings, unofficial conversations
e) Forest owner clubs	Active forest owners in certain towns, invited experts	Learning about divergent forest related issues	Regular meetings, unofficial conversations
Informal and un- or self-organised activities and events
f) Neighbourhood network in the countryside	Owners living in the same village in the countryside	Exchanging information about implemented and forthcoming silvicultural actions, joint projects	Everyday unofficial conversations, visible examples from other forest owners
g) Kinships	Family members and relatives who own the forest together	Discussing forthcoming actions in forest	Unofficial conversations, advice giving
h) Discussion forums on the Internet	Anonymous or identifiable Internet users	Various interests	Reading and writing messages

Table 3. Challenges when increasing forest owners’ knowledge exchange and solutions that interviewees suggested.
Challenges	Suggested solutions
Reaching inactive forest owners	Informal and personal invitations from peers
	The activity level of owners could be raised by increasing informal discussions in present extension events
	Utilising existing interest groups (e.g. hunting clubs)
Feelings of inequality	Gathering together with similar owners
	Sufficiently small groups
	One-to-one discussions and mentor owners
Delivery of inaccurate information between peers	Guidance of peer-learning groups by professionals
	“Basic knowledge of forestry” requirement before joining a community
Defining interesting topics and environments	Finding current topics or challenging activities shared by participants
	Spending time together in a forest
Developing practices in social media	Better control of anonymous discussion forums
	Use of social media in conjunction with face-to-face meetings