The Impact of Foreign Participation in Outdoor Tourism Activities on Job Creation

We test whether foreign tourists in outdoor activities have contributed to job creation in Northern Portugal in 2006-2014. This is the very first study in Portugal that focus on the impact of foreign participation in outdoor activities on job creation, being innovative in this regard. Based on data from 4 sources, we employ OLS to regress the employment changes on the number of new firms, turnover, the share of foreigners in outdoor tourism activities, and on labour productivity. Results indicate a negative but not statistically significant impact. This result may imply that the higher foreign participation in outdoor tourism activities the lesser the number of employees in those firms. However, since results are non-significant they suggest the need of further empirical investigation.