The Routledge Handbook of Second Home Tourism and Mobilities

C. Michael Hall, Dieter Müller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317193531
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Second homes have become an increasingly important component of both tourism and housing studies. They can directly and indirectly contribute a significant number of domestic and international visitors to destinations and may be part of longer-term retirement, lifestyle and amenity migration that can have significant economic and social effects on communities and destination development.

This volume offers an overview of different disciplinary and methodological approaches to second homes while simultaneously providing a broad geographical reach. Divided into four parts exploring governance, development, community and mobile second homes, the book provides a contemporary account of the major issues in an area of growing international interest.

This timely handbook covers a wide range of dimensions – from planning to the role of second homes in development and the management of their impact. The international and cross-disciplinary nature of the contributions will be of interest to numerous academic fields in the social sciences, as well as urban and regional planners.

PART I

Introduction

1

SECOND HOME TOURISM

An introduction

Dieter K. Müller and C. Michael Hall

Introduction

Second homes have been a focus of tourism research for many years, though the number of publications on the topic has risen considerably over the years and particularly since 2004 (Müller & Hoogendoorn 2013; Hall 2014; Müller 2014). A bibliometric review of the quantitative development of second home research based on Scopus (search terms in title, abstract and keywords: “second homes” AND tourism) identified 288 entries since 1978. Although this measure is crude and does not cover older materials such as Coppock’s (1977) book, it is obvious that a quantitative increase has taken place. Indeed, although Coppock’s 1977 volume was the seminal academic contribution, its role has been taken over by Hall and Müller’s Tourism, Mobility and Second Homes: Between Elite Landscape and Common Ground since its publication in 2004. The exceptional position of these two books is also mirrored in the numbers of citations as measured in Google Scholar, where Hall and Müller’s book has 429 citations and Coppock’s book 318 (as of 1 August 2017). These volumes also indicate that the literature on second homes is now mature and increasingly specialised, which also implies that overviews of the research field are increasingly difficult to accomplish. However, this chapter aims at providing a short review of research on second home tourism. This is done by presenting some aspects of the history of second home research, before moving forward to conceptual and definitional issues.

A short history of second home research

Second home research has its origins not least in the Nordic countries (e.g. Ljungdahl 1938; Aldskogius 1968, 1969; Hansson & Medin 1954; Svenson 1954; Linkoaho 1962; Finnveden 1960) and in Canada, where the first cohesive body of literature was produced by Roy Wolfe (1951, 1952, 1962, 1965, 1977, 1978; see also Lundgren 1974) (Hall & Smith 2015). Elsewhere, early examples of second home research can be found in Australia (e.g. Marsden 1969; Mercer 1970), France (e.g. Clout 1969, 1971), the United Kingdom (e.g. Bielckus et al. 1972; Martin 1972; Downing & Dower 1974), and the United States (e.g. Ragatz 1970).

Increasing personal mobility owing to car ownership entailed a growth in second homes in the Western world and triggered a rising academic interest as well. Coppock’s Second Homes: Curse or Blessing? (1977) marked a peak in the growing concern regarding the impact of second homes on rural communities and the environment, as well as significant community ­opposition in some locations. The book presented studies from Europe, North America and Australia on various aspects of second homes and formed an influential product of early scholarship that mirrored the increasing importance and geographical spread of the phenomenon (Müller & Hoogendoorn 2013).

Globalisation and the growing number of households purchasing property abroad, not least within Europe, caused renewed interest in second homes from the mid-1990s on, which otherwise had more or less disappeared from the international research agenda during the 1980s (Buller & Hoggart 1994; Müller 1999). Several reviews have addressed the topics covered since then, but a dominant feature in the first period has been to map current patterns of second homes and second home tourism in various states (Müller 2004, 2014; Casado-Diaz 1999, 2012; Hall 2014). Hall and Müller’s Tourism, Mobility and Second Homes: Between Elite Landscape and Common Ground (2004) marked the peak of this period providing a set of national benchmark chapters. However, it seems that the book also contributed to re-animate a rather sleepy field of research by setting the phenomenon in the relevant context of globalisation, changing mobilities, ageing societies and rural restructuring. Other volumes describing various aspects of second home tourism were also published and provided important contributions to the understanding of second home tourism (e.g. Gallent et al. 2005; McIntyre et al. 2006; Mazón et al. 2009; Paris 2011; Roca 2013; Janoschka & Haas 2014; Walters & Duncan 2016).

Second home research has changed since the topic was first addressed. Rural geographers, regional scientists and planners led the debate on second homes during the 1970s (Pacione 1984), while tourism geographers and other tourism researchers have engaged more intensively from 2000 onward. Müller (2011) argued that this developed separate discourses with limited interaction, where particularly tourism perspectives tended to be neglected.

Today’s situation is even more complex, since tourism researchers are not the only ones to present relevant literature on the topic. Instead, the fields of housing studies (Paris 2010), rural research (Rye & Gunnerud Berg 2011; Halfacree 2012), ageing research (King et al. 2000; Breuer 2005), and population studies (Benson & O’Reilly 2009; Janoschka & Haas 2014) have recently recognised second homes as a pertinent issue for research. This also entailed variations in the used terminology referring to the phenomenon of second home tourism: “lifestyle mobility” (Benson & O’Reilly 2009; Casado-Diaz 2012), “lifestyle migration” (Janoschka & Haas 2014), “heterolocal lifestyles” (Halfacree 2012), “multi-local living” (Schier et al. 2015), “multiple dwelling” (McIntyre et al. 2006), and “residential tourism” (Mazón 2006; McWatters 2009) refer to roughly the same phenomenon. Residential tourism is often used in southern locations and refers to the seasonal “snowbird” mobility (McHugh & Mings 1996), bringing retired North Europeans and North Americans to destinations with more pleasant climatic conditions. In contrast to much of other second home research, residential tourism addresses urban apartments and mobile homes rather than rural cottages, which dominate in many other parts of the world.

Another change in second home research is the remarkable expansion of second home research beyond its origins in Europe and North America. Today the scientific literature contains case studies from all inhabited continents. This change includes a shift in that it rejects the assumption that second home tourism would only be a phenomenon among the rich and in developed Western countries (Halfacree 2012). Instead, as Hoogendoorn (2011) points out, second home use is also a phenomenon among less well-off groups of society. This reminds researchers that second home tourism probably never was a phenomenon of the Western world alone. For example, Huang and Yi (2011) and Hui and Yu (2009) deliver pioneering work from China, Hajimirrahimi et al. (2017) discuss second homes in Iran, and Barrantes-Reynolds (2011) and Hidalgo et al. (2017) report on the residential tourism in Latin America. Wong and Musa have also highlighted campaigns to stimulate second home tourism in Malaysia (Wong & Musa 2017; Wong et al. 2017). Similarly, Visser and Hoogendoorn have produced a substantial body of knowledge regarding second home tourism in South Africa (e.g. Visser 2004, 2006; Hoogendoorn & Visser 2004, 2011, 2015; Hoogendoorn et al. 2009; Visser & Hoogendoorn 2015; Hay & Hay 2017), highlighting among other aspects the challenges of research on second homes in a context where accessible data is lacking.

A bibliometric perspective

The growing interest in second home research discussed above is also manifested in bibliometric databases (Figure 1.1). One should keep in mind that the figures derived from the Scopus database discriminate against many scientific sources and not least a wide array of contributions in languages other than English. The overall amount of publications is thus even higher. Still the Scopus figures show a significant increase in publishing activities since the early 2000s. The relatively low numbers of publication prior to 2004 does not only mirror a limited interest, but also that literature has not always been published in English or in scientific journals and books (see also Hall 2014). Hence, the dramatic increase shows a change in publication practice as well.

Figure 1.1 Annual numbers of bibliometric entries (published articles, books, book chapters, reviews).

Source: In Scopus for search terms “ ‘second home’ AND tourism” and “residential tourism” (date for retrieval 1 August 2017).

Figure 1.2 presents a bibliometric account of the international dimension of second home research based on data from the Scopus database. The figure displays the countries of origin of the authors of the entries on second home tourism and residential tourism and furthermore shows the bibliometric similarities in terms of referenced literature between the national bodies of literature. The figure shows that the largest body of literature is Spanish, but it is rather isolated and has only limited similarity with other national bodies of literature. A core position is taken by literature coming out of Sweden. This body of literature is closely related to literature from Finland, New Zealand and South Africa.

Figure 1.2 Bibliometric network of second home literature...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• PART I INTRODUCTION
• PART II GOVERNANCE, PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
• PART III DEVELOPMENT AND COMMERCIALISM
• PART IV COMMUNITY, CULTURE AND IDENTITIES
• PART V CARAVANNING AND MOBILE SECOND HOMES
• PART VI THE FUTURE OF SECOND HOMES
• Index