Under the J-Credit Scheme, the amount of certified carbon credits generated from forest management (forest credits) has been increasing every year. However, many of them remain unsold. In this study, we aimed to clarify the characteristics and motivations of forest credit buyers and to examine issues to activate forest credit trading. We sent questionnaires to 179 forest credit buyers from six forest management projects in Niigata Prefecture, of which 96 responded. Most of the forest credit buyers were small and mid-sized companies that aimed to contribute to the local forest. The amounts of credits they bought were also small, mostly less than 5 t-CO2. Most of the buyers were encouraged to buy forest credits by either prefectural officials, the credit creators, or intermediaries (coordinators) such as local banks. Among these, coordinators were effective in obtaining new buyers and expanding sales channels. However, many of the buyers who were encouraged by coordinators bought only small amounts of credits and were less willing to continue buying. In contrast, buyers who actively learned about forest credits without being encouraged by others were more willing to continue buying larger amounts of credits. Thus, in order to activate forest credit trading, it would be effective to increase efforts to motivate buyers who were encouraged by coordinators, and to increase opportunities to catch the attention of companies that are willing to contribute to the forest environment.