Alternative tourism–timber dependencies and the development of forested rural regions

Tourism and wood processing (timber) present two primary business activities in rural forested regions and the manner in which they are combined, in part, determines the economic and socio-demographic vibrancy of the local community. In this paper, we focus attention on unique regional economic characteristics of a subset of rural counties in the northeastern United States that are both forested and variously dependent on wood products and tourism. Results suggest that dependence on joint forest resource outputs is clearly associated with unique attributes of regional socioeconomic structure.