The Forest Management Certification Awareness and Recognition among General Directorate of Forestry Personnel

This study is carried out with the aim of determining the awareness and recognition of the forest management certificate at the level of managers and employees of the General Directorate of Forestry. The scope of this research consists of the field service units of the General Directorate of Forestry. A questionnaire based on face to face interview technique was utilized as the data collection tool. In the study, 71 of all 243 forest managements located in the nation have been contacted and a survey has been applied to 146 managers and employees. In this context, a scale, in which 34 proposals are used under 5 main factors, was formed. The obtained data were analyzed in SPSS program by using non-parametric tests. The research results have shown that the FSC certification system has the highest recognition level. On the other hand, GDF managers and employees were determined to have low awareness for forest management certification. In addition, the geographical region where the forest management is situated, the certificate usage status of the management and the method utilized in the forest products sales were identified as variables with statistically significant differences (p<0.05)