Effects of the October 2013 U.S. Federal government shutdown on National Park gateway communities: the case of Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor, Maine

ABSTRACT

The U.S. Federal Government experienced a shutdown that halted much of its spending and services over 16 days in October 2013. Federal government officials noted a wide variety of impacts that the shutdown had on economic activity, including a reduction in the admission fees collected by the National Park Service and losses of visitor spending in ‘gateway communities’ located near national parks and monuments. This article examines the effects of the October 2013 federal government shutdown on Acadia National Park’s gateway community of Bar Harbor, Maine. Regression results show that the 16-day shutdown is associated with a 76% reduction in Acadia visitation in October 2013 and a 13% reduction in tourism-related sales. This suggests that an estimated 17% of the potential visitors impacted by the Acadia closure cancelled their trips to Bar Harbor. This change in visitor behaviour is a reasonably large response to a short-term event such as the government shutdown.

KEYWORDS:

• Federal government shutdown
• National Park visitation
• gateway communities
• tourism

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• L83
• R11
• H60

Notes

¹ Taxable retail sales data are from Maine Revenue Services, which defines the Bar Harbor Economic Summary Area as the Town of Bar Harbor and other communities located on Mount Desert Island. The retail stores counted as ‘tourism related’ include gift shops, jewellery stores, antique dealers and bookstores.

² Park visitation figures are from the U.S. National Park Service.

³ Retail sales figures are adjusted to October 2013 values using the Consumer Price Index.

⁴ U.S. retail sales figures are from the Monthly Retail Trade Survey, U.S. Census Bureau.

⁵ Monthly weather variables are constructed using data from the National Climatic Data Center (Menne et al. 2012).

Additional information

Funding

Gabe’s research programme is supported, in part, by the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station, and the Hatch Multistate Project [#ME0-L-7-00525-13,NE 1049] of the USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture.