Abstract
Climate change seriously impacts forest ecosystems. In order to maintain forest cover, adaptation strategies should be implemented. In France, adaptation decisions are mainly in the hands of private forest owners. However, little is known about the way they perceive climate change or about their decisions related to adaptation. The aim of this article is precisely to obtain such information through a survey conducted among more than 900 French private forest owners. We identified determinants to the adoption of adaptation (gender, area, profession, having a management document, perception of climate change impact). More importantly, we show that the decision of adaptation should not be thought of in general but strategy-by-strategy because we identified strategy-dependent drivers. The article concludes with a discussion about the public policy implications of the results.