The KU Leuven Division of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics is seeking to join consortia under Topics 3 and 4 of the FOREST Partnership call. We are particularly interested in contributing to work packages addressing market demand, consumer acceptance, adoption and scaling of innovations and socio-economic sustainability, stakeholder engagement, and policy support. Our team has extensive expertise in socio-economic research supporting the transition towards sustainable land-based bioeconomies, including in forestry and agriculture. We contribute advanced knowledge on market demand, consumer behaviour, stakeholder preferences, adoption decisions, and the economic and societal conditions required for the successful uptake of forest-based innovations. A particular strength of our team is the ability to analyse both demand-side acceptance (consumers and citizens) and supply-side adoption decisions (forest owners, managers and other land managers), providing an integrated understanding of barriers and opportunities for large-scale uptake of forest-based innovations.

Our expertise includes:
Consumer acceptance, willingness-to-pay and behavioural drivers related to sustainable products consumption (amongst consumers) and practice adoption (amongst forest/land managers)
Design and empirical evaluation of interventions that stimulate market uptake and behavioural change
Quantitative (e.g., AHP, cognitive mapping) and qualitative (causal loop diagrams, co-development workshops, focus group discussion, interviews, etc) analysis of adoption barriers and enabling factors affecting forest managers, landowners and supply-chain actors
Evaluation of economic viability and business cases, e.g., through cost-benefit analysis, of forest-based innovations
Socio-economic impact assessment of land management interventions and assessment of environmental, social and economic sustainability trade-offs
Evaluation of policy instruments, incentive schemes and governance mechanisms to facilitate implementation and scaling

The team combines behavioral and experimental research approaches, choice experiments, willingness-to-pay assessment, econometric modelling, AHP, Q-methodology and socio-economic impact assessment, complemented by stakeholder engagement through surveys, co-development workshops, focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews.

The KU Leuven Division of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics is an interdisciplinary research group with extensive expertise in environmental economics, behavioural research, socio-economic assessment, and sustainability transitions in agriculture, forestry, and the bioeconomy. The team has a strong track record in the design and implementation of national and international research projects and regularly contributes as coordinator, work package leader and task leader in large multidisciplinary consortia.

We are currently leading a work package in the Horizon Europe project CLIMB-FOREST on the environmental and socio-economic assessment of forest management strategies and wood products for a sustainable bioeconomy. Additional relevant experience, amongst others, includes the Belgian Soy and Soy 2.0 projects, where we have a leading role in assessing the consumer and market conditions required for the successful diffusion of novel sustainable products. This work includes analysing consumer preferences, market demand, and willingness to adopt products based on locally produced soy, as well as identifying the factors that can stimulate or constrain market uptake. The projects also examines the adoption of novel crops and farming practices by producers, including the barriers, incentives and decision-making processes influencing uptake. We further contributed significantly to the Horizon 2020 LIFT project though sustainability assessments of alternative farming systems across multiple spatial scales and dimensions of sustainability, integrating environmental, social and economic perspectives.