Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Wood is a limited resource which is exposed to a continuously growing global demand not least because of a politically fostered bioenergy use. One approach to master the challenge to sustainably meet this increasing wood demand is short rotation forestry (<jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content>). However, <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> is only gradually evolving and it is not fully understood which determinants hamper its expansion. This study provides theoretical insights into economic and environmental determinants of an <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> expansion and their interplay. This assessment requires the incorporation of farmers' decision‐making based on an explicit investment appraisal. Therefore, we use an agent‐based model to depict the decision‐making of profit‐maximizing farmers facing the choice between <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content>, the cultivation of conventional annual agricultural crops and abstaining from cultivation (fallow land). The land use decisions are influenced by general economic determinants, such as market prices for wood and annual crops, and by site‐dependent determinants, such as the environmental site quality. We found that the willingness to pay for <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content>‐based products and for annual crops most strongly influences the coverage of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> in the landscape. <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> will in most cases be established on sites with low productivity. However, a decrease in the willingness to pay for annual crops will lead to a reallocation of <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> plantations to sites with higher productivity. Furthermore, our model results indicate that the impact of the distance to processing plants on farmers' decisions strongly depends on general economic determinants and the given spatial structure of the underlying natural landscape. Analysing the relative importance of different determinants of an <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> expansion, this study gives insights into the approach of using <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content> to sustainably meet the growing wood demand. Moreover, these insights are taken as a starting point for the design of effective government interventions to promote <jats:styled-content style="fixed-case">SRF</jats:styled-content>.</jats:p>