ABSTRACT

The sustainability of any activity is today judged in terms of its social, economic and environmental consequences: second home purchasing and subsequent use is no exception. One useful metaphor is to view these ‘components’ of sustainability as the legs of a ‘stool’, liable to collapse if any one is damaged or broken. In environmental terms, second homes may be seen as inherently unsustainable: they add to housing pressure in the countryside, contribute to land-take, and serve no particular accommodation need. However, some second homes may be drawn from unneeded housing stock, and development cannot be judged environmentally harmful merely because it does not fulfil a particular or ‘acceptable’ social role. Indeed, the role played by second homes might be viewed as beneficial, meeting the leisure and recreation aspirations of owners and users. Indeed, the ‘stool’ metaphor suggests the need to strike a balance between the social, economic and environmental costs of any activity. This means that a ‘balance sheet’ approach allows environmental costs to be offset by social gains, or an economic price to be balanced by environmental benefits. Although this approach to understanding and achieving sustainability is not without its critics (see for example Dawe & Ryan, 2003) it is a useful way of reviewing the impacts of second homes, recognising as it does the inherent need to make judgements based on relative social, economic and environmental gains and losses. It is extremely difficult to quantify the impacts of second homes; their social

benefits (fulfilling legitimate leisure demand) and social costs (displacing permanent residents) are hard to pin down. Similarly, even their economic consequences are disputed: do owners being money and investment to rural communities? Do they spend in local shops and support local services? Or is there no net economic benefit, because those using second homes acquire their property through urban estate agents, and, when using their second home, bring food and other supplies from home? The reality is that it is certainly impossible to accurately ‘model’ the positive and negative impacts of second homes on any ‘balance sheet’ or for any of the ‘three legs’ of sustainability. Indeed, as Pyne (1973, p.21) has argued, any scientific cost-benefit analysis of the second home phenomenon is ‘rendered meaningless’ by the great number of necessary arbitrary assumption that feed into any model. Hoggart et al (1995, p. 178) adds that ‘[ . . . ] whether or not the outcome [of second home growth] is regarded as positive or negative by communities can depend heavily upon local circumstances’.