Promoting reforestation to landowners:
The role of advice-giving through information, efficacy, narratives, and identification in storytelling.
This video contains information on best practices for giving advice to woodland owners to encourage reforestation behavior. Communicating reforestation efforts is a challenge for foresters. There are many types of advice to offer, and it is unclear which type of advice is better suited to promote tree planting behaviors. This study explored the effectiveness of three different types of advice (narrative, informational, or efficacy) for different groups of landowners. We recruited landowners (N = 317) from the Driftless Area of Wisconsin and segmented them into two groups based on self-reported stage of behavior. They were randomly selected to view one type of advice message in the form of an online video. Landowners in the early stage of tree planting behavior had higher intentions to take the advice with a narrative advice message. Those in the later stage of behavior were more influenced by informational and efficacy advice messages. We also found that with narrative messages, identification with the narrator was important for increasing intention to utilize advice.