What type of landowner would supply marginal land for energy crops?

Landowner perspectives can inform policy to encourage expansion of energy crop production onto non-crop, marginal land. This paper analyzes a survey of owners of non-crop marginal land in southern Michigan to classify landowners by their attitudes toward energy crop production. A factor analysis identifies common factors underlying their perceptions of bioenergy production, and those factors are used in a cluster analysis that classifies landowners into four types: disamenity-sensitive, profit-oriented, bioenergy supporters, and bioenergy skeptics. Multinomial logit regression using the identified landowner types elucidates how these types are grounded in landownersʹ perceptions of bioenergy production and their socioeconomic characteristics. Policy makers aiming to encourage bioenergy production should target the profit-oriented landowners and the bioenergy supporters as they are most open to energy crop production.