Current Issues in Tourism
Editor: C. Michael Hall (Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand) and Chris Cooper (Foundation Professor of Tourism, University of Queensland, Australia) Michael and Chris are joint editor of the book series Aspects of Tourism. Reviews Editor John Jenkins (University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia)
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Volume: 3 Number: 4 Page: 283–324
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Institutional Factors Influencing the Size and Structure of Tourism: Comparing Dalarna (Sweden) and Maine (USA)
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David Vail and Tobias Heldt
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This paper explains why neither Maine, USA's comparatively laissez faire economic and land use institutions, nor Dalarna, Sweden's more heavily regulated economy, seems well designed to make tourism
a powerful economic development engine. The paper focuses on three clusters of institutions that have a major influence on tourism's scale, economic structure, and long-term sustainability. Labour laws
and labour market institutions are important determinants of tourism employment, job quality, product mix, production methods, and regional competitiveness. Land ownership and property rights
influence both the incentives facing landowners, tourists, and tourism businesses and stresses on ecosystem carrying capacity. Commodity taxes affect the absolute and relative prices of various tourist
services and, via feedback effects on demand, influence tourism's aggregate scale, activity mix and transportation/location patterns. The paper employs institutional contrasts between Dalarna and Maine
to frame hypotheses that will guide a larger comparative study of sustainable tourism in forest regions. Perhaps most controversially, we hypothesise that Sweden's venerable right of common access (allemansrätten),
as currently implemented, impedes sustainable tourism development. An appendix sketches the current state of tourism in the two regions.
© Channel View Publications 2000
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