ABSTRACT
The study maps relevant competences of the second-home owners such as education,
managerial and entrepreneurial experiences and also their willingness to participate in pro-
cesses and forums of knowledge transfer in their second-home community, e.g. their will-
ingness to be mentors for local entrepreneurs or sit in on local companies’ boards. A main
hypothesis is that the second-home owners might possess the necessary competences in
order to contribute to local development in their second-home community, but if they
are not willing to take on a more active role in terms of knowledge transfer, the debate
regarding second-home owners as competence brokers for rural entrepreneurship and
innovations is rather futile. The paper, thus, also links the relationship between the com-
petences of the second-home owners and their willingness to participate to local commu-
nity development both more generally and within a number of specific areas. Finally, the
paper frames and discusses the “capital-transfer” perspective and the “competence-trans-
fer” perspective within the wider context of contemporary changes within policies and the-
ories for rural development.
