Assessing the social performance of state-owned forest farms in China: integrating forest social values and corporate social responsibility approaches

Our study focuses on the social performance of state-owned forest farms and proposes a framework for evaluating both resource-based and corporate-based approaches. We found that: (1) the overall average social performance score of the sample of state-owned farms (3504 farms) assessed using our framework was 41.56 (out of 100 points), indicating that the social performance of Chinese state-owned farms was relatively low. (2) More developed provinces scored higher than less-developed ones, revealing a regional difference in social performance with respect to sustainable forest management (SFM). The clear implication here is that state-owned forest farms in less-developed regions can improve their social performance by striving to improve forest and ecological culture development, science and education, employment, stakeholder participation, forest services, etc. (3) The state-owned forest farms have developed a more balanced use of forest resources. The results suggest that social performance requires greater attention from managers and decision-makers in the long-term, and they may wish to consider adopting it as a corporate management tool. In general, our study suggests a practical framework for integrating social performance into SFM decisions and policies.