The “inhabitant footprints” of second home owners in Alpine resort communities: anyone at home?

In Finland, there are almost 500,000 second homes and in some areas the number of second home owners exceeds that of permanent residents. Currently, second home owners are also spending more time in their second homes. If second home owners are not permanent residents, administration may exclude them from local institutions, and treat second home owners as only partial members of the community. It has been stated that municipal decision making and the role of the municipality as an actor in the local community should be broadened in order to strengthen democracy and the participation of its residents as a core of municipal self-administration. Hence, participating in communal decision making is mainly possible only for permanent residents. The issue is whether it is possible to change this situation via the municipalities’ own reforms and state regulations. New municipal administration experiments have recently emerged in Finland. Here we study how the new local administrative model, the Communal District Committee, has affected local participation and local governance in a rural areas by exploring second home owners’ opportunities to participate in local decision making and development processes. The data consists of documents, focus group discussions and a questionnaire. We used qualitative and quantitative methods in the data analysis. We found, on one hand, that permanent residents of villages recognise second home owners’ hesitation to participate in local issues requiring planning and decision making. On the other hand, local-level communal decision making does not promote the participation of second home residents. On the basis of the findings of the study, we suggest that the municipal authorities should recognise the existence and importance of second home owners in the area, acknowledge them better in municipal plans and strategies, and offer them more resources and means to participate.

Many rural communities are experiencing a reduced full-time population who are to a certain degree being replaced by an influx of part-time dwellers from urban areas. This paper examines how second home owners' presence can be perceived as a valuable compensation for a reduced full-time population by the remaining local residents, when it comes to the latter's social needs. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with six local residents from the same sparsely populated municipality in Norway. Despite all of them wanting more neighbours, their valuations of second home owners' presence were strikingly different. The findings indicate that second home owners' presence was highly appreciated as a social compensation for a reduced full-time population, as long as local contextual circumstances did not invite a comparison with new permanent residents as a possible alternative. When the latter was the case, second home owners' presence was assessed as an insufficient contribution rather than a social resource. As such, local residents' valuation of second home owners' presence in sparsely inhabited areas may depend to a large degree on the residents' perceptions of the possibilities for future in-migration in their local community.

The paper contributes to extant research by conceptualising and extending our understanding of communities of place and particularly the role of second home owners in the co-creation of these. Previous research has dealt with how translocated residents, such as second home owners, participate in co-creation activities with permanent residents. Despite considerable attention given to second home owners impacts on local communities, research that delves into the intricacies of their participation is missing. Specifically, there is a gap in understanding the diverse ways second home owners engage in the co-creation, and sometimes co-destruction, of communities of place. Utilising longitudinal data gathered from 2016 to 2022 in two second home areas in Denmark, this paper explores the defining aspects of these dynamics, synthesising them into distinct roles that second home owners can assume in these co-creation processes. Three overlapping co-creative/co-destructive roles of second home owners in communities of place that transcend places and contexts are defined and explored: custodians, holiday consumers and innovators. Contrary to prior assumptions, our research challenges the notion that specific groups of second home owners inherently contribute more positively to a community, as we find that each role carries the potential for both co-creative and co-destructive outcomes.

Nowadays, second homes are important for rural development and rural communities in many parts of the world. Second home owners are more committed to the place than tourists and other occasional visitors. However, they are not counted as full members of the local community, which is often seen as a coherent group of like‐minded people. This study examines the concept of community in the context of second home owners in a popular tourist region of Finnish Lapland. The study is based on diaries kept for one year by ten second home owners. The diaries are analysed as narratives that record happenings that the writers see as worth narrating. They show that various social contacts as well as media and nature create the entirety of the attachment to the second home place. Social contact occurs in many places, from services to nature environments. Also residents’ association seems to be an important forum of social influence. The authors suggest that more spaces for socialising are needed in order to have interaction between permanent residents and second home owners.

Rural communities are getting more diversified in terms of people's backgrounds, sources of livelihood and interests towards the rural landscape. A common way to discuss rural community change has been to contrast in‐migrants and seasonal residents with long‐term rural residents. In this article, we aim to challenge this segmentation. We ask what it is to be a dweller in the modern countryside and how much the residential status has to do with people's interests and use of space. Based on a postal survey in a case study area in Finland, we look into the differences in the valuation of different leisure activities performed in rural space between second home owners and permanent residents. After dividing permanent residents and second home owners into further subgroups based on their spatial and temporal possibilities to engage in rural leisure, we found that there are no specific activities or groups of activities typical for certain groups of rural leisure space users. Differences between local residents and second‐home owners are rarely explained by this simple dichotomy, rather the differences are better explained by spatial and temporal accessibility.

The importance of tourism impacts for different local resident groups: A case study of a Swedish seaside destination

Local support for renewable energy technologies? Attitudes towards local near-shore wind farms among second home owners and permanent area residents on the Danish coast

IntroductionIn Portugal, according to the National Population and Housing Census, the number of second homes grew by 73 per cent in the period 1991-2011. Their number reached almost one million one hundred thousand in 2011, which means that nearly a third of families owed such homes. Although generally following the trends in many European countries, the expansion of second homes in has had some special features that are strongly related to emigration and out-migration and the consequent depopulation of many rural areas where, apart from new housing construction, the emigrants' and out-migrants' first homes are frequently converted into second homes.There have been two opposing types of arguments on the issue of the economic effects of second home expansion on local development: some say that second homes represent an additional burden to the management of public goods, since investments needed for building and maintaining physical infrastructure and social services are not compatible with their temporary use; others see second homes as an opportunity for many rural areas, especially those marked by depopulation, to take advantage of some additional revenue, whether through property taxes, or by an increase in consumption.The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of the economic effects at the local level of the second home phenomenon by bringing about findings from a case study of a rural region in the central part of Portugal. To this end, the results of a survey of second home owners, conducted in the Oeste, a region NW of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), as a part of the research project Expansion of Second Home and Spatial Development Planning in Portugal (SEGREX) financially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, are discussed.1. Literature reviewSecond homes as a real estate investment or an alternative dwelling lifestyle produce effects of various order, nature, magnitude, significance, extent and effects through their both physical features and usage. In the focus of this paper are the economic effects of second homes. Major common findings from research on the economic effects of the second home phenomenon worldwide have been that the nature of positive or negative effects depends on (i) the rural or urban character and the level of development of second home location; (ii) the length of stay; and (iii) the distance from the first home (Hoogendoorn, 2010; Marcouiller et al., 2013).In rural areas affected by demographic and economic decline the benefits of the expansion of second homes seem to outweigh the negative effects. Several studies in such areas showed the importance of second home owners as consumers of local products and services, thereby contributing to some revitalization of a stagnant, poorly diversified rural economy (Nordin, 1994; Green et al., 1996), as well as that it is proportionate to the length of the owner's stay and to the time/distance to the first home. Paris (2006) came to the same conclusion after reviewing the literature on the expansion of second homes in Europe and North America. Gallent & Tewdwr-Jones (2001) demonstrated the potential of such expansion for the development of tourism and leisure-related services. Other authors showed how second home tourism may be important to the survival of local small agricultural producers who may prefer second homes users as alternative consumers to selling through major distribution chains (Sannebro, 2001). Also Muller (2004) argued that owners of second homes, including foreigners, consume as much or more local products and services than permanent residents. However, this demand for agricultural products by temporary residents may cause price inflation, which may affect the purchasing power of the local population. Hoogendoorn and Visser (2004) showed the importance of the construction and renewal of houses for second home use to the local economy since that is in charge of local contractors and workers and also most of the materials are purchased locally. …

Exploring the relationship between crime and place in the countryside

Culture clash, or intracommunity tensions related to rapid in‐migration, between permanent and newcomer residents has been well studied in relation to environmental conservation in natural amenity communities; however, less is known about culture clash within communities characterized by high rates of second home ownership. We examine the causes of perceived culture clash in communities of the U.S. Northern Forest using mail survey data from four case studies within New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. In contrast to past culture clash research, we consider multiple dimensions of cultural capital that are independent of second home owners' rural or urban origins, and how key aspects of culture compare to economic standing and social interaction as drivers of perceived culture clash. Permanent residents perceive greater levels of culture clash than second home owners, net other measures, indicating that seasonal migration in and of itself encourages notions of otherness between residents. More frequent social interaction between resident groups helps to ameliorate intracommunity tensions. Cultural capital and social interaction measures were equally effective in explaining variation in perceived culture clash. Our findings indicate that the culture clash concept extends beyond scenarios of environmental conflict and applies to more general forms of intergroup tensions.

In the sustainable development of rural tourism, great emphasis is put on protecting the quality of life of local communities in environmental, economic and socio-cultural aspects. The phenomenon of tourist enclaves, a classic example of which are closed tourist resorts in developing countries, is indicated as a significant threat to the quality of life of such communities. In this article, we decided to apply the concept of tourist enclaves to the spatial development of second home tourism in peripheral areas (East Poland). The main goal of the study was to investigate the extent to which the spatial layout of tourist villages influences the activities shared and the intensity of social contact between residents and second homes owners, as well as the quality of relations between them. The results indicate significant differences between villages comprising different spatial arrangements.

Many of Australia's second homes are located in peripheral locations along the coast, away from suburbia and cities. Many of these areas have specific challenges relating to a declining or consolidating agricultural sector and the need to diversify economies in a climate of uncertainty. This offers specific challenges for coastal local governments, who are often resource poor, managing transitional economies with unclear futures in terms of current and projected populations. This article begins with this broad landscape and focuses on two southeastern Victorian coastal areas that are known second home hotspots. Our article presents the findings of a residential survey conducted in Inverloch and Philip Island that specifically captured second home owners to discover who they are, why they have a second home in that area, what local area concerns they have, and what they intend to do with their second homes in the future. Within the limitations of our data, we find ambivalence among second home owners as a group, supporting the scholarship that identifies the difficulties of pinning this phenomenon down. That said, there are some discernible patterns among second home owners, particularly when they are put in contrast with the permanent residents of these communities.

While seasonal workers form a central component of the tourism industry, there has been limited research on their sociological interactions with, and acceptance by, the host communities in which they reside. This ethnographic case study uses social capital as a heuristic device to examine the experiences of, and social barriers faced by, seasonal workers hoping to become permanent community residents within the mountain resort community of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Research findings indicate the existence of social barriers in the form of tight bonding networks and a lack of bridging networks, which exclude and marginalize many of these seasonal workers from the community. This has helped promote residential instability in what is already a transient community, raising concerns regarding future community ownership and attachment.

For many rural communities in the United States, tourists and retirees make a major contribution to the local economy. The role of recreational home ownership in these communities is not well understood. We examine the attitudes toward land use controls and local economic development among seasonal and permanent residents. We compare growth machine and local dependency theory explanations for support of land use controls and growth activities. Based on focus groups and survey data collected from seasonal and permanent residents of a northern Wisconsin county, we find that full‐time (permanent) residents are much more supportive of local economic development activities and less likely to favor land use planning than are seasonal residents. Socioeconomic differences between seasonal and permanent residents do not explain away the variation between the two groups in these attitudes. Among seasonal residents, support for land use controls declines as they spend more time at their lake homes. The results tend to support Cox and Mair's local dependency thesis.

This article evaluates and describes the presence, extent and locational impact of residential second home ownership in the Canadian Rocky Mountain town of Canmore, Alberta in response to planning needs and requirements. This research includes the results of two studies that provide a temporal view of second home retirement owners and amenity attributes through the use of social survey data, multivariate analysis and geographic information system (GIS) visualization. One assumption of second home research focuses on retirement migration towards permanent residency in many amenable environments. The Canmore example illustrates problems with such an assumption and shows that international retirement markets can differ from domestic ones with subsequent differences in ownership patterns, leisure and local participation behaviours, and planning needs. Revealed are landscape attributes and sociocultural amenities important to second homeowners and the larger community. The research outcomes add understanding about international second homeowners in a small Canadian town and how group differences or similarities may translate for future second home retirement plans within this Rocky Mountain gateway to Banff National Park.