Martin Falk

University of South-Eastern Norway | USN · Department of Business and IT

This study examines the formats offered for academic conferences in the mature stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two out of three organisers discontinue their usage of online video tools and focus on in-person conferences. Only one out of five conferences offers hybrid solutions and even fewer a virtual alternative (13%). Data for the analysis origi...

This study examines factors associated with threats to Cultural World Heritage Sites as perceived by their management. Employed for the analysis are data on 396 UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Sites in North America and Europe as well as 2158 threats identified by the UNESCO Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting for Europe and North America in 2014. On...

This study offers new insights into the largest threats to natural and mixed World Heritage sites in developed countries as considered by their management. In addition to this, the capacity of the management to deal with threats is examined. An Ordered Probit model is used that distinguishes three groups of threats and four categories of adaptive c...

Norway. One out of four Norwegian municipalities is partly covered by glaciers and permanent snow. In the winter seasons of 1983–2020, there is a decline in snow depth from 50 to 35 cm on average (based on 41 popular second-home areas in the mountains). Results of the fixed effects Poisson estimator with spatial elements show that there is a signif...

In this study, the stock market performance of the travel and leisure industry during the Covid-19 pandemic is investigated by use of the three-regime Markov switching model. The analysis employs daily data for six sub-sectors (airlines, gambling, hotels, leisure services, restaurants and bars as well as travel and tourism) for the United States fr...

Due to their remoteness or boundless nature, activities at Natural Heritage Sites are difficult to monitor. In this study, two digital measures of the interest in Natural Word Heritage Sites are compared: one ex ante based on the number of Wikipedia page views of the site and another ex post derived from actual visitation as measured by the number...

The aim of this paper is to examine how tourism conference organisers react to the restricted mobility incurred by the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Do they cancel, change format or change date for the event? This study contributes to an initial analysis of how organisers of international academic conferences in the tourism and hospitality industry...

This study investigates empirically if land characteristics (especially forests and mountains) are of importance for the local ability to withstand the shock of the Covid-19 on domestic tourism demand during the summer of 2020. A second step of the analysis focuses on the recovery stage in the subsequent summer. Three tourism indicators are conside...

This study investigates empirically changes in domestic summer tourism demand following the Covid-19 pandemic in 305 regions across six European countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden) based on official data. Five different groups of NUTS 3 regions are identified in accordance with a typology suggested by the OECD where densit...

In this study, the gender representation of keynote speakers at conferences before and during the Covid-19 pandemic is investigated. Data is based on 162 academic conferences in tourism and related fields during the period 2019 to mid-2022. These conferences have 546 keynote speakers of which 4 per cent are representing low- or middle-income countr...

This study investigates empirically how natural snow depth affects the number of downhill skiers. Data include the number of skier visits for the 32 largest ski resorts in Sweden from the 1998/1999 to the 2018/2019 seasons. Results of spatial dynamic estimations show that an increase in natural snow depth in the ski area has a significant negative...

This study investigates the short-run impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of domestic overnight stays at the regional level in the summer season 2020. Official data for 65 regions in four countries are used for the analysis (Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland). Dynamic panel data models are employed to estimate a tourism...

Purpose–This article examines the nature of service provision in the platform-based collaborative economyfrom the perspective of entrepreneurship theories. It departs from a knowledge gap about the individual andcontextual determinants of service provision through digital platforms. By exploring these determinants forthe service provision in two ma...

This study examines factors of importance for the pricing of virtual academic conferences based on information on their quality attributes. Data are based on 76 virtual conferences held or planned to be held in the field of tourism and related fields between April 2020 and December 2021. The distribution of fees is skewed with a median price of US$...

Many ski-lift operators are trying to diversify their business by opening summer parks and in so doing, to reposition their resorts as year-round destinations. Almost half of ski-lift operators in Tyrol introduced such parks in the period from 2000 to 2018. The purpose of this study is to assess competitive determinants of following suit by copying...

This study investigates empirically how the regional economic activity, measured as the agglomeration of establishments, affects domestic travel and tourism flows during the COVID-19 summer of 2020. Domestic tourism flows are approximated by the number of overnight stays in all 96 French regions. Results from spatial estimations reveal that lower e...

This study attempts to establish the importance of specific formally achieved higher skills for the innovation intensity in firms across a group of European countries. Innovation expenditures are calculated as the ratio to turnover and the main explanatory variable is the proportion of highly skilled employees (tertiary education in ICT-oriented or...

This article estimates a count-data model on the flight behaviour of Austrian holiday-makers based on information from a large representative quarterly survey spanning the years 2014–2016. On average, the number of holiday flights ranges between 0.6 and 1.2 per year for residents in the least populated region and the capital, respectively. Results...

This study estimates factors of importance for the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions generated by travellers flying for different reasons based on representative Austrian micro data for the period 2014–2016. The annual average number of flights taken by adults vary between 0.1 (visiting friends) and 0.8 (going on holiday), and the amount o...

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between high-speed fibre broadband access and establishment dynamics at the municipality level. Special emphasis is placed on micro as well as on small and medium-sized establishments in contracting areas. Data cover information on 290 municipalities in Sweden for the period 2010–2018. Results of...

This article investigates the performance of the stock market and its volatility in the travel and leisure industry for three Nordic countries using daily data from June 2018 to June 2020, a period that includes the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic. The methodology is based on the Markov regime switching model that allows unobservable regime shifts...

This study investigates the potential of European universities as hosts for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) grantees. Factors explaining both the probability of a university hosting an MSCA grantee and its extent are estimated using a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. Results reveal that the probability of hosting MSCA grantee...

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent of visitors to World Heritage Sites in Europe and North America, given their specific location and characteristics. Visitor flows are approximated by 680 million Instagram posts for about 525 World Heritage Sites. Independent variables encompass year of inscription, size, type (monuments, churches,...

This study investigates the extent to which international academic conferences changes format to virtual when faced by sudden Covid-19 related immobility. Data on 587 conferences in the fields of business, economics, information technology, management and other social sciences that were planned to be held between March and August 2020 are retrieved...

The number of economics-related articles in the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism (SJHT) has recently increased considerably. Despite this increase, the research efforts of Nordic economists on tourism issues have lagged behind in an international comparison. The recent increase in the number of economics-related publications in SJHT...

This study provides new empirical evidence regarding the relevance of evaluation criteria and firm characteristics for public R&D funding decisions. The database used contains both accepted and rejected R&D project proposals, project evaluation scores, and several firm characteristics. The probit estimations show that proposals with high scores on...

In 2017, about 45% of the European population believed that cultural heritage has a positive effect on the local economy and that there are not too many tourists. However, about 33% of Europeans consider the number of tourists to be too high while simultaneously recognizing cultural heritage’s positive impact on the local economy. Based on Flash Eu...

This paper investigates the returns to ski lift investments. The analysis covers 370 ski lifts in 45 ski areas in South Tyrol in North Italy (Alto Adige) for the winter seasons 2002/2003 to 2013/2014. Dynamic panel difference-in-differences estimations show that investments in new ski lifts attract more skiers. On average, ski lift operators who ha...

Winter holidays in the European Alps early 2020 led to unexpected challenges for the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Sweden), since many travellers brought home a free rider virus, Covid-19. In this study a modified gravity model is used to investigate how important destination country, size and geographical distance are for the extent...

The aim of this study is to examine whether the introduction of stricter rules on short-term rentals (STRs) in some European cities will have an impact on hotel overnight stays. The treatment group consists of cities with the strictest regulations in Europe (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and London). The coarsened exact matching method is use...

Electronic (e−) invoices potentially enhance environmental sustainability in several stages from production of paper to its usage. This study investigates empirically to what extent a set of firm characteristics and external factors associate with the probability to send e-invoices and with the intensity of usage, based on a representative survey o...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide a series of indicators to determine the limits to urban tourism growth, tourism gentrification and overtourism. The study addresses overtourism within the frame of urban liveability through a proxy analysis of tourism-relevant indicators for major European tourist cities. Design/methodology/approach...

A difference-in-differences analysis is used to investigate the short-term price effects of eight sporting events in Finnish Lapland. Data consist of 220,000 room bookings from the reservation system of a nine-hotels chain. Treated hotels are those located within an area where sporting events are regularly held. The control group consists of hotels...

Since 2009, one out of five European airports participate in carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction programmes, although only 8% of them are certified as CO2 neutral. This study aims to examine empirically internal as well as external factors of importance for airport participation in emission reduction programmes at different levels of involvement. Estima...

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of a greatly reduced seasonal ski pass for overnight stays in winter destinations. The analysis covers 59 winter sports destinations in Switzerland for the winter seasons 2012/2013 to 2017/2018, of which 11 introduced the “Magic Pass”. Winter destinations without the reduced ski pass constitute...

This study uses a time-varying model that provides new evidence on the changing relationship between domestic overnight stays of selected winter sport destinations and natural snow conditions. A Kalman filter method combined with wavelet-based multiresolution analysis (MRA) is employed to investigate the relationships in intervals between 2 and 4 a...

According to a 2017 survey, approximately two in five European residents believe that the number of tourists poses a threat to the continent’s cultural heritage. In order to investigate the determinants of this perception, the data from this survey of 26,000 residents was used to estimate ordered probit models. The results from these reveal that th...

The book profits of 220 ski lift operators in Austria are analysed in order to identify the determinants relevant for business success. The median ratio of accounting profits to total assets was zero in 2013, while 43% had negative 'book' profits and another 12% had zero profits. Results using quantile regressions show that the ratio of book profit...

This paper investigates the intrinsic and extrinsic determinants of wine prices. The data originates from the largest wine competition in the Czech Republic called Prague Wine Trophy including both domestic and imported wines. The determinants include expert sensory evaluation (100-point quality scale), alcohol content (abv), sugar content (grams p...

In 2015, one third of European citizens paid attention to environmentally-friendly practices or certificates when choosing accommodation or destination for their main holiday, although only about 16 per cent considered a mode of transportation with low impact on the environment. Using 20,000 individual observations from the Flash Eurobarometer, a B...

This study investigates the link between productivity and innovations (technological as well as non-technological), taking into account the information and communication technology (ICT) intensity of firms, measured as the proportion of broadband internet connected employees. The analysis is based on official firm-level data on innovation activitie...

This study investigates the link between export behavior, labor productivity and R&D activities in 17,168 small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Austria, during the period 1995–2011. The analysis covers six subgroups of SMEs: young, old, micro, born global, manufacturing, and services. Using a two-part model controlling for firm effects, the result...

This paper investigates the efficiency of ski lift companies across different climate zones in a group of countries based on establishment data. By a joint estimation of the stochastic frontier production and efficiency equations, the results indicate that ski areas in subarctic climate zones are far more efficient than their counterparts in warmer...

This paper investigates the relationship between booking lead time and hotel room rates while controlling for various booking, room and hotel characteristics. Data are based on big data drawn from a hotel reservation database covering about 123,000 bookings over a 5-year period. Quantile estimations for online bookings show that early bookings are...

This study investigates the short‐run impact of the flight departure tax introduced in Germany and Austria in 2011 on the number of flight passengers. The analysis covers 310 airports in 30 European countries for the period 2008–2016. Dynamic panel difference‐in‐differences estimations show that the flight tax reduces the number of passengers by 9%...

This article provides new evidence on the stability of the long-run income elasticity of tourism and travel demand by use of the recently developed smooth time-varying cointegration regression model. The estimations control for relative purchasing power parity of the source country and make use of a specific country dataset where domestic and forei...

This study investigates how the local environment (access to fibre broadband infrastructure, local competition and seasonality) alongside commonly established factors such as size, age and price, influences exit of accommodation establishments during a period of ten years. Cox proportional hazard model estimations based on census data for the accom...

This article examines the determinants of the debt-to-capital ratio of ski lift operators. The analysis is based on the total population of 248 ski lift operators in Austria. The median debt-to-capital ratio is 73%, with a highly skewed distribution, where almost every fourth operator exhibits negative equity capital. Robust regressions show that t...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the factors that influence cancellation behaviour with respect to hotel bookings. The data are based on individual bookings drawn from a hotel reservation system database comprising nine hotels. Design/methodology/approach The determinants of cancellation probability are estimated u...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a first evaluation of the effectiveness of the early bird discount on ski lift tickets by estimating the impact on hotel overnight stays of the Saas-Fee destination. Design/methodology/approach The difference-in-differences (DID) approach is used to compare winter sport destinations with and withou...

Recently, several winter seasons in the European Alps have been unexpectedly warm. In the Austrian mountains, December 2015 was the warmest since weather records began, with a temperature deviation of +6.6 °C compared to the long-term average. By use of data on 6200 individual trips from the Austrian travel survey, a multinomial Logit model is empl...

This study investigates the impact of new market product (market novelty) sales on labor demand (employment). Based on a two-output cost function (market novelties and existing products) a relative employment equation is derived with the ratio of labor to material inputs as dependent variables. The relative labor demand model is estimated using bie...

en This article investigates the impact of the introduction of the patent box/IP regime on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in R&D and related activities, including design, developing, and testing activities, using city level data. The data are based on approximately 1,200 cities in 80 countries. Results obtained by use of a difference‐in‐di...

This study tests for a structural shift in the relationship between revenues of ski lift operators and natural snow conditions. The analysis is based on time series data for the Swedish ski lift industry spanning from 1980 to 2017. Since 1970, snow depth in winter sport destinations has decreased markedly by about 5 cm per decade. Estimations based...

The aim of this study is to provide new empirical insights into the attractiveness of European cities for international conferences and to investigate how cities perform in relation to their potential. In order to explore this attractiveness, a zero-inflated count-data model is estimated. The analysis uses a unique data set where information from t...

This paper investigates the drivers of growth in Swedish micro firms providing computer services. Analysis is based on linked data from several sources: registers on business, value added tax (VAT) and education as well as from production statistics. ordinary least squares (OLS) estimations, including approximately 7000 computer service micro firms...

This paper provides new evidence on the impact of temperatures on tourism demand in the winter season. The analysis is based on time series data spanning from 1960 to 2015 for the South Tyrolean mountains in Italy. Since 1960, winter temperatures have increased by 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade, on average. A nonlinear autoregressive distributed la...

The aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the most crucial determinants of success for firms applying for public R&D grants. Previous studies have been limited to firm level data and mainly tested how firm characteristics affect the allocation of R&D grants. Thereby, they cannot differentiate between firms that have applied for...

This paper investigates the determinants of international overnight stays to Finnish Lapland in the early winter season. The data are based on major winter destinations for the period 1996–2014 and are distinguished by nine major visitor countries. During the sample period, international overnight stays in December increased rapidly with a growth r...

This study explores the effects of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) on tourism demand, measured as overnight stays, for the years 1998–2014. The analysis includes 34 ECoC hosts and makes use of data on approximately 800 European cities. A difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimator shows that hosting the ECoC leads to an inc...

This study investigates the relationship between climate variability and the participant cancellation ratio at one of the world’s oldest, longest, and largest cross-country skiing races, the Vasaloppet. This race is held in the Swedish region of Dalarna on the first Sunday of March each year. Data are based on the number of registered and starting...

Ski areas are known to expand by linking their lifts to neighbouring systems. Based on data from approximately 250 winter sport destinations in Austria, pooled over the years 1998–2014, this study explores the effects of such horizontal collaboration on the number of overnights stays in the area. A difference-in-differences (DID) approach combined...

This article investigates how the depreciation of the Russian rouble against the euro has affected Russian tourism demand in Finnish regions and cities. Using dynamic panel data models, the authors find that the elasticity of Russian tourists' overnight hotel stays with respect to exchange rates is significantly larger than 1 (approximately 1.6) in...

This study presents new empirical evidence regarding the impact of ICT/e-commerce activities on labour demand. The data is based on new and unique data for 10 European countries for the period 2002–2010. A key feature of the empirical analysis is the use of several types of advanced ICT activities, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems...

This paper investigates the determinants of ski lift revenues between 1998/1999 and 2014/2015 in 20 ski areas in Finland by differentiating among winter climate conditions. Results based on dynamic panel data estimations reveal that revenues depend positively on real GDP, snow depth, and an early Easter, and negatively on relative ski lift ticket p...

This study investigates the relationship between several indicators of ICT usage and digitalization and the relative demand for highly skilled workers. The data are based on two-digit industry-level information on seven European countries for the period 2001–2010. For manufacturing industries, static fixed-effects models show that the share of empl...

This paper investigates the characteristics of the choice between cities and culture (or aspects of both) in selecting certain travel destinations. The data consist of 28,700 individuals in 32 European countries. Bivariate probit model estimates show that those with moderately and skilled occupations, students, pensioners, women, people living in c...

This chapter introduces the global productivity challenge facing the hospitality industry. Global competitionin the hospitality industry has led to increasing pressure on profit levels. To leverage profits hotelsincreasingly are forced to evaluate their operational performance. Specifically, the global productivitychallenge entails that hotel manag...

After a short boom phase between the late 1970s and early 1980s, the number of passengers transported in glacier skiing areas during the summer season stagnated. Estimates derived from dynamic panel data models based on detailed lift data show that demand for glacier skiing in the summer season is significantly and positively related to real privat...

This study investigates patterns in electronic commerce (e-commerce) activities and their impact on labour productivity growth for a group of 14 European countries. At hand for the exercise is a unique panel of micro-aggregated, firm-level data spanning the years 2002 to 2010. The empirical approach involves two main elements: a static specificatio...

The export participation of SMEs in the Swedish computer and business service industries has increased rapidly over the last decade. Despite this, export participation rates—including those of micro enterprises—remained low at 13 per cent in computer services and 8 per cent in business services in 2010. Based on uniquely linked firm-level datasets...

This article investigates the relationship between foreign direct investment through backward linkages and the innovation activities of local firms. The data consist of firm-level data drawn from the Community Innovation Survey for eight Central and East European countries. Based on 38,000 firms, probit estimates show that the innovation performanc...

Abstract This article examines the extent to which demographic and socioeconomic characteristics influence the decision to visit and the number of visits to museums, art galleries, historical monuments, and archaeological sites. Using ordered probit models based on data for 350,000 adults in 24 EU countries, we find that the likelihood and number o...

This report was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW) and the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation, and Technology (BMVIT). It was written by a working group consisting of the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), JOANNEUM RESEARCH (JR) and the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) with the s...

Estimates based on robust regression methods show that the level of labour productivity of exporting small- and medium-sized entreprises (SMEs) is 13 percentage points higher than that of nonexporting ones in a given industry and country. The data are based on the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for 19 European countries with about 110 000 firms...