The involvement of private forest owners in forest management has been frequently examined through attitudes, values, beliefs, objectives and motivations for owning and managing forestland. It has been noticed that owners’ views on forest management do not always align with those of policy makers. However, empirical studies on forest owner’s conceptualisation of forest management are scarce. To determine how private forest owners in Europe conceptualize forest management, a survey (n = 1140) was undertaken in seven European countries (Portugal, France, UK, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and Romania). The owners were asked to indicate their level of agreement with 19 pre-tested statements defining forest management on a five-point Likert scale. Classification and regression trees were used to explain owner conceptualisation in regard tomajor factors influencing property size, age, education, gender and a divide into the eastern/western European countries owner conceptualizations. Owners primarily conceptualised forest management as preserving forests for future generations and considered that “a good business opportunity”, “an opportunity to earn additional money” or a “source of subsidies” were less important. Forest management was understood as a mixture of forest maintenance, ecosystem orientation stewardship and economic viabilityactivity. Property size, age and eastern/western countries were the most relevant predictors of forest owners’ conceptualisations. Small-scale forest owners from western European countries considered ecosystem orientation more important while owners from eastern European countries considered economic aspects and forest maintenance more important. The differences were attributed to the social-political systems dynamics in Europe in the 20th century and changing values in post-modern society. Policy makers must be aware that the forest management paradigm pendulum swinging along a commodity/non-commodity continuum is unsynchronized between Eastern-Central and Western Europe.