Land tenure and entrepreneurship in mountainous regions

Mountainous regions provide a variety of natural and cultural elements attractive for permanent or seasonal settlement. During the last decades, many people decide to leave urban centers and resettle in mountains. At the same time, new forms of remote working patterns are emerging especially under the current pandemic situation. However, young people living in mountains still migrate in search for job opportunities. In this frame, the session focuses on research related to entrepreneurship patterns, especially in tourism activities, in mountainous areas as a vehicle of encouraging young people to remain in their home-places and newcomers to be attracted in mountains. At the bottom line, land tenure patterns appear to hold an important role in this perspective. Land ownership, legal rights to land, heritable patterns, availability of land and buildings, abandoned buildings, etc., all form several aspects that either encourage or discourage people from relocation and/or initiation of an enterprise. Research in this area can provide useful feedback for future mountainous development.