This study analyses the linkages between private forest owners' perceptions of forest management, and their affinity for subsidies, in a range of European countries. Society increasingly requires the provision of ecosystem services from forests, but the willingness of forest owners to redirect management goals from wood production to the provision of public goods is crucial for sustaining ecosystem services. EU incentives in the forestry sector are still mainly oriented towards an anthropocentric vision of forest management. Forest owners and managers are diverse, and although many efforts have been made to understand the role of forest subsidies in private forest management, it is still necessary to analyse the different perspectives on forest subsidies with a regional comparative approach. This paper explores European private forest owners' affinity for subsidies - through survey data at European level.