ABSTRACT
Experiences have been connected with economy due to a growing leisure demand in the Western world. Today many people give a high priority to their leisure time, and as a consequence they are assumed to require the existence of amenities close to their place of residence. Quality of place is a factor that is thought of as playing a considerable role in the decisions people make on where to settle, and this is the reason why quality of place is seen strategically as a lever of demographic and economic development of local economies. Quality of place includes among other things attractive natural environments as well as urban qualities, a supply of culture and facilities for leisure activities. From a production perspective it has been argued that cultural factors represent sources for local entrepreneurship, regional differentiation and competitive advantage through creative industrial cluster building (Cooke and Lazzeretti 2008). Earlier works on experience economy and place developed the hypothesis that experience economy may function as a lever of growth for peripheral regions, due to an assumed decentralized pattern of location and consumption (Lorentzen 2009). A parallel can be seen in creative industry research. Collis et al. (2010) summarize research that shows how creative industrial activity increasingly takes place in outer suburbia and peri-urban regions.
