A Qualitative Assessment of Interrelated Impacts of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on the Timber Supply Chain in the Southern United States

Abstract

The southern United States (U.S.) produces approximately 60% of the Nation’s timber products, almost entirely from private forests. This work explores the perspectives of stakeholders with regards to the interrelated impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) on the timber supply chain in the U.S. South. Four focus groups were held with key stakeholders to explore the effects of the pandemic on forest landowners, loggers, and wood mill workers. We compared focus group participant insights to published research and other summary information from reputable sources. We found that supply, demand, and government factors were interdependent and affected the timber supply chain heterogeneously during the pandemic. Focus group participant discussions generated many new hypotheses, which can be empirically or qualitatively tested in future analyses.

Keywords:

• Focus groups
• pandemic challenges
• post-pandemic opportunity
• SARS-CoV-2
• Southern forestry

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the pre-reviewers, Dr. Stella Schons and Dr. Kristin Floress, for providing comments on an earlier draft of this perceptions article. We would also like to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their recommendations.

IRB Approval

North Carolina State University 25008.

Notes

1 The rubric used for coding focus groups can be found in Appendix B.

2 Focus groups were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Participants then were encouraged to review transcripts and allowed to edit their own words to improve the validity and credibility of study results (Candela 2019). This type of respondent validation (“member checks”) helps avoid misinterpretations (Maxwell 2012).

3 Participants also noted new establishments of silvopastoral systems, harvesting pine straw, and growing timber on shorter rotations for chip n’ saw.

Additional information

Funding

We would like to acknowledge the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Grant 2022-68006-36430 for funding this research.