Abstract The extensive literature on non-industrial private forest owner typologies often assumes that different forest owner types will respond to different policy instruments according to shared forest ownership objectives. Forest owner typologies using principal component analysis and subsequent k-means clustering techniques are now prolific. The surprisingly little empirical work linking forest owner objectives typologies with forest owner opinions or experiences of different policy instruments, however, shows ambiguous support for recommended targeting efforts. This study uses standard tools of analysis to investigate the relationship between private forest owners' ownership objectives and their opinions on forest conservation policy instruments. Results show some statistically significant, but in absolute terms weak relationships between ownership objectives and Sweden's command and control green tree retention measures, participation in voluntary forest stewardship certification, acceptance of a hypothetical financial incentive, and overall interest in taking more environmentally beneficial forest management measures. These results suggest the benefits of targeting different kinds of instruments to different kinds of ownership objectives may be limited.