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Abstract
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.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, the author would like to thank her colleague Jostein T. Brobakk and her former fellow student Inga Marie O. Skavhaug for the inspiring collaboration on a sociological analysis task based on his material, on an MSc/PhD course at NTNU in 2009. Their discussions clearly laid the foundation for this paper. Furthermore, she would like to thank the participants of “The third international seasonal homes and regional development workshop” in Trondheim for constructive suggestions during the making of this article. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for many helpful comments.