As a core link of the forestry industry, the potential and importance of the forest products manufacturing industry are becoming increasingly evident. However, in recent years, various external adversities like global pandemics, climate-related disasters, geopolitical tensions, and international trade wars have increasingly exposed vulnerabilities within forest product manufacturing supply chain networks. These disruptions attract widespread attention in academia. However, prevailing theories regarding supply chain resilience often stress game theory among partners and substitution-based decision-making, providing limited insights into how forest product manufacturing enterprises adapt to supply chain disruptions in digital contexts. In this research, a resourcebased perspective is used to examine supply chain resilience, and a new "pathway model" is introduced, with digital service innovation identified as a primary force that drives supply chain adaptive resilience. This research utilizes survey responses from the forest product industry in China, concluding that digital service innovation has a positive impact on supply chain adaptive resilience via the promotion of digital resource re-orchestration. Moreover, this effect is moderated by cross-border search-forest product manufacturing firms that have a broader scope in searching cross-border experience and exhibit a stronger positive effect of digital service innovation on resource re-orchestration. The current study forms the pioneers in incorporating digital service innovation into the resilient research of forest products supply chains and bringing forward the resource-based mechanism to strengthen adaptive capability of the forest product manufacturing firms during disruptions in the supply chain network. These findings make useful revelations for academic research and the formulation of forestry product policies.
Ecological pressures, carbon-neutrality commitments, and the pursuit of new quality-productive forces have intensified the demand for digital transformation in China's forestry manufacturing sector. Using 881 firm-year observations from A-share-listed forestry manufacturing enterprises during 2012 through 2024, this study examined the association between new quality productivity and corporate digital transformation. Higher levels of new quality productivity were associated with more extensive digital transformation, although this association weakened under greater financing constraints and more stringent environmental regulation. The findings remained robust across alternative variable definitions, model specifications, and approaches to potential endogeneity. Subsample analyses revealed substantial regional and sectoral heterogeneity. The association was significant in Northeast, Eastern, and Western China, with the largest estimated coefficient in Northeast China, but was not significant in Central China. It was also significant among wood-processing and manufacturing enterprises but not among producers of forestry-related cultural and recreational goods. These results connect productivity upgrading with digital transformation in resourcedependent industries and indicate that financial capacity, regulatory conditions, and sectoral context condition this relationship. They also support differentiated transformation strategies tailored to regional production systems, sectorspecific technological requirements, and firms' capacity to absorb the financial and regulatory costs of digital upgrading.
Consumer preferences are always changing, and wood species are not immune to those trends. Grain pattern, color, density, and other characteristics found in wood can play vital roles in how consumers decide which secondary wood products to purchase or, in the case of customized products, which species to select. This study investigated consumer perceptions of common and underutilized wood species available for use in secondary wood products, which addresses an evolving gap in understanding consumer decision-making. The research measured appearance-based evaluations of 10 different wood species native to Wisconsin. Data were collected from consumers at two home shows in Wisconsin in January and February 2023 using semantic differential scales with eight attributes. Findings revealed distinct consumer perceptions across species and attributes, and often the underutilized species compared favorably with more established species. Walnut, cherry, red oak, and white oak were perceived as formal, with walnut being the most formal. Softwoods (white pine, tamarack) were seen as casual. All species were viewed as sustainable, with white pine being perceived as the most sustainable. Except for white pine, all species also were perceived as being durable. Hardwoods were largely considered stately, whereas softwoods were seen as modest. Overall, the favorable attributes associated with hardwoods were tempered by the fact that most hardwoods were perceived to be expensive.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly evolving as a means of improving sustainability, traceability, and resilience in wood product supply chains; however, its potential applications remain fragmented across forestry, logistics, manufacturing, and digital traceability. This review synthesizes studies on AI-driven SSCM in wood-product supply chains. Using a PRISMA-aligned review design based on the Scopus database, 313 records were identified, and after screening, 50 studies were included in the formal review corpus. The analysis distinguishes between implemented AI applications and proposed or adjacent digital technologies and organizes the findings by supply chain stages and triple-bottom line outcomes. However, most mature AI-related applications are concentrated on forecasting, routing, optimization, monitoring, and traceability support. Accordingly, fragmented data infrastructures, operational bottlenecks, trust and explainability issues, and sustainability trade-offs are key barriers to AI adoption. Similarly, bibliometric analysis provides insights into co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence networks. This review proposes a triple bottom line operational framework linking AI-driven technologies, wood product supply chain stages, and sustainability outcomes, which identifies priorities for future research directions, industry implementation, and policy design.
The digital economy may facilitate green transformation in forest-based industries by improving information flows, technological capacity, market connectivity, and resource allocation. However, its implications for the non-timber forest product (NTFP) industry remain insufficiently understood. Using panel data for 25 Chinese provincial-level regions from 2011 to 2022, this study examines the association between digital-economy development and NTFP green transformation, its transmission pathways, the conditioning role of human capital, and its spatial effects. NTFP green transformation is measured using a composite index covering labor productivity, processing upgrading, green certification, resource-use efficiency, pollution-control efficiency, and ecological stability. Two-way fixed-effects, parallel transmission-path, panel threshold, and spatial Durbin models are employed. Digital-economy development is positively associated with NTFP green transformation (beta = 0.347, p = 0.028). Green technological innovation generates a significant indirect association of 0.056 (95% CI: 0.010-0.126), whereas the indirect association through market access is not significant (0.038, 95% CI: 0.008-0.094). The estimated human-capital threshold is 0.492 (bootstrap p = 0.003). The digital-economy coefficient is nonsignificant below the threshold (beta = 0.121, p = 0.346) but becomes larger and significant above it (beta = 0.452, p = 0.001), with a significant difference between the two regimes (p = 0.002). Spatial decomposition identifies a positive local direct effect of 0.321 (95% CI: 0.071-0.571, p = 0.012), whereas the inter-provincial indirect effect remains nonsignificant (0.088, 95% CI: 0.533-0.709, p = 0.781). The baseline association remains generally robust across alternative index constructions and sensitivity analyses, although the one-period-lagged digital-economy measure and standalone digital-finance measure are not statistically significant. These findings indicate that the contribution of digital development to NTFP green transformation depends primarily on locally embedded green-innovation capacity and complementary human capital rather than on market expansion or automatic inter-provincial diffusion.
