My main research interests are in behavioural economics, tourism economics and transport economics. I have recently used field experiments to explore voluntary cooperation in a public good setting. Current research involves empirical investigations of social norms in relation to voluntary cooperation as well as applied work on financing recreational infrastructures by micropayments.

Lindberg  Kreg, Peter Fredman and Tobias Heldt (2008). Facilitating Integrated Recreation Management : Assessing Conflict Reduction Benefits in a Common Metric, Forest Science. (forthcoming)

Vredin Johansson Maria, Tobias Heldt and Per Johansson (2005) The effects of attitudes and personality traits on mode choice. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Volume 40, Issue 6, July 2006, Pages 507-525. Download

Vail David and Tobias Heldt (2004) Governing snowmobilers in multiple-use landscapes: Swedish and Maine (USA) cases. Ecological Economics, Volume 48, Issue 4, 20 April 2004, Pages 469-483. Download

Vail David and Tobias Heldt (2000) Institutional Factors Influencing the Size and Structure of Tourism: Comparing Dalarna (Sweden) and Maine (USA). Current Issues in Tourism 3 (4), 283-324. Download

Heldt T. (2005). Conditional Cooperation in the Field: Cross-Country Skiers’ Behavior in Sweden, Working paper Dalarna University. (submitted to Journal of Environmental and Resource Economics) Download

Heldt T. (2005). Informal sanctions and conditional cooperation: A natural experiment on voluntary contributions to a public good, Working paper Dalarna University. (submitted to Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization) Download

Sustainable Nature Tourism on Forest Land - By Means of Micropayments (project homepage)

Abstract

The overall purpose of the project is to analyze what kind of institutions and means can be used to collect user charges for recreational services under open access. Given virtually open access institutions like the Swedish allemansrätten it is important to investigate what determines people’s donations or voluntary contribution to recreational services. To facilitate donation from a consumer perspective and to use a cost effective mean of organizing donations from a producer perspective this project uses micro payments based on cellular telephony and tests its effects on willingness to donate.

One of the empirical parts of the project involves a field experiment in which cross-country skiers’ has the option to donate to track preparations via a micro payment. One specific hypothesis that is tested is whether bundling donations with participation in a lottery is preferred to a bundling with weather information and rebates in the ski-shop.  

The project has been financed by FORMAS (the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning) and has to some extent been a joint venture between tourism industy, ICT industry and academia.