Social Ecological Variables of Coppice System

On the basis of the preparatory interviews and document gathering, a two-part semi-structured survey instrument was developed. The first part gathered qualitative data through openended interview questions (Bengston et al., 2011), while the second part collected quantitative data through a questionnaire on the importance of economic/logistical and ecological variables in the loggers? decisions about cutting. In this second part, respondents were also asked to provide a reason for the quantitative assessment they provided to the various questions. The semi-structured survey was administered to the contacts established during the exploratory phase, and to those met through referrals in a process of snowball sampling (Saunders, 2012

Noy, 2008). During the preliminary interviews with loggers and forestry service officials, we found that they took into consideration much the same information and variables in deciding whether to cut. This sociological information corresponded to the
entire geographic area that contained the ecological sampling plots. This enabled us to associate the area of the interviews with the area of ecological sampling. Moreover, the snowball approach focused particularly on subgroups of users whose main specialization is coppicing. Interviews ended when no new information emerged, and thus when data saturation
was achieved (Saunders, 2012

Davis et al., 2013). A total of 31 contacts were interviewed, 11 of whom were commercial loggers, 10 private loggers and 10 members of ?Comunanze?.
The conversations in the two parts of the surveys were digitally recorded and transcribed for content analysis supported by Nvivo 10 software.