Tourism labor market impacts of national parks: The case of Swedish Lapland

In a Nordic context, economic impacts of tourism in national parks remained largely unknown due to lacking implementation of standardized comparative measurements. For this reason, we want to investigate the economic impacts of national parks in a peripheral Scandinavian context by analyzing employment in tourism. Theoretically, the paper addresses the idea of nature protection as a tool for regional development. The scientific literature suggests that nature can be considered a commodity that can be used for the production of tourism experiences in peripheries. In this context nature protection is applied as a label for signifying attractive places for tourists leading to increased tourist numbers and employment. This argument follows mainly North American experiences pointing at a positive impact of protected areas on regional development. Meanwhile European studies are more skeptical regarding desired economic benefits. A major challenge is the assessment of tourism’s economic impacts. This paper suggests an approach that reveals the impacts on the labor market. This is particularly applicable since data is readily available and, moreover from a public perspective, employment and tax incomes are of uppermost importance in order to sustain population figures and local demand for public services. At the same time accessibility and low visitor numbers form major challenges for tourism stakeholders and complicate the assessment of economic impacts through questionnaires and interviews. The paper shows that the assumption that nature protection promotes positive economic development through tourism is not applicable in a northern Swedish context. Hence, it rejects the often suggested positive relationship between nature protection and tourism labor market development.