Local Economic Role of Nature‐based Tourism in Kuhmo Municipality, Eastern Finland

The study was carried out to examine and quantify the economic role of nature‐based tourism on a local, municipality level. In contrast to mass tourism, nature‐based tourism is characterized by individualism, small tourist groups and geographically scattered supply of services, which makes economic and regional development evaluation difficult. Kuhmo municipality in the Eastern Finland wilderness has a long tradition in small‐scale nature‐based tourism. A so‐called Nordic model was applied to quantify direct, indirect and induced income and employment impacts. The model was developed further in order to track income leakage. The data consisted of 385 tourist groups, i.e. people travelling together, and 100 tourism companies interviewed in Kuhmo. The gross income impact amounted to 3.45 million Euros a year, equalling exactly half of the total tourism income. The share of income leakage was 48%, leaving 1.98 million Euros as a net income impact. Nature‐based tourism employed 53 man‐year‐units in Kuhmo, which was 48% of tourism jobs and 1.6% of total employment. Compared to general tourism, there was no major difference in the amount of daily expenditure. Yet, the pattern of expenditure was different and generated less direct and more indirect effects. The results show that nature‐based tourism already plays a role in maintaining the population in peripheral, rural locations and in bringing precious additional jobs to regions suffering from heavy structural unemployment.