Private forests account for more than 90% of the forestland in Georgia. They provide vital economic products, essential environmental and ecological benefits, and abundant opportunities for recreation. Maintaining and enhancing the profitability of private forests is critical to ensuring sustainable provision of the multiple benefits provided by these forests. Prudent forest landowners may consider conducting more intensive forest management and exploring nontimber income to improve the profitability. However, many private forest landowners experience pressure from the high costs of forest maintenance, including timberland property tax. The Georgia legislature introduced several property tax incentive programs to provide tax relief among landowners and conserve forestland. The Conservation Use Valuation Assessment (CUVA) and Forest Land Protection Act (FLPA) programs are the major incentives available to Georgia forest landowners. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the programs in conserving forestland has been frequently questioned by researchers and various stakeholders since their inception. To address these issues, first, this dissertation conducted a literature review on assessments of the effectiveness of state property tax incentive programs for forest landowners in the U.S. Measures of program effectiveness, factors affecting landowners’ participation, and methodologies were synthesized. Most existing studies were conducted at the aggregate levels. A study with more fine-grained information would provide more insight. Second, forest attributes of parcels enrolled and not enrolled in the CUVA/FLPA programs were compared for a selected list of counties in Georgia. The attributes included variables that had market, tax, and spatial information available at the parcel and county levels. Furthermore, a multilevel logistic regression model was used to analyze the effects of various factors on a parcel's enrollment in the CUVA/FLPA programs. The results indicated that the CUVA/FLPA programs promote the conservation of large tracts of forestlands but are limited in conserving forestlands with higher land values. Third, the dissertation presented the results from a survey of practicing consulting foresters regarding major forest management activities and the associated costs for family landowners in Georgia. The study provides first-hand information on forest management costs and implications on profitability for Georgia family forest landowners.