Hunting reindeer in East Iceland : the economic impact

Abstract

Tourism in Iceland is of great importance and ever-growing. During the period 2000-2008 the share of tourism in GDP was 4.3% to 5.7%. One aspect of the tourist industry is hunting tourism, upon which limited research has been done and only fragmented information exists on the subject. The aim of this thesis is to estimate the economic impact of reindeer hunting on the hunting area. The hunting area is in East Iceland, the only region of the country where those animals can be found. To the author’s best knowledge this is the first time an attempt has been made to investigate this topic. In 2010 a survey was performed amongst Icelandic hunters. The survey was done online and pertained to the year 2009. The emphasis was on monetary expenditure. The Keynesian multiplier and input-output model were used to estimate the economic impacts. The main findings are: using gross output on the one hand and disposable income on the other, that 162 mISK and 62 mISK respectively constitutes the economic impact in the hunting area. Hunters spent on average about 217,000 ISK in total on the hunt which yields about 290 mISK. Out of that amount about 93 mISK was for hunting licences and 72% of the amount was paid to landowners resident in the hunting area, or about 67 mISK. Total spending on other items relating to the hunt was about 197 mISK. It is estimated that reindeer hunting constituted the basis for about 26 jobs in East Iceland in 2009.Key words: reindeer hunting, hunting tourism, economic impact, Keynesian multiplier, input-output model.