Decomposing the heterogeneous discretionary spending of international visitors to Fjord Norway

•Total expenditures is increasing but inelastic in length of stay, travel party size, and income, respectively.•Those who visit Norway for the first time spend more than repeat-visitors.•Multi-country travelers spend less money than those who have Norway as their only destination.•Tourists' propensity to engage in different activities affects total spending is systematic ways.•Some factors affect both the magnitude and composition of spending, while others affect only one of these dimensions.

This paper provides a comprehensive econometric analysis of the expenditures of international visitors to the Western fjord-region of Norway. The data come from an intercept survey conducted on randomly elicited summer visitors at central tourism locations in the region. Estimations are performed for total group expenditures and personal tourist expenditures. To adjust for potential sampling bias, both un-weighted and weighted regressions techniques are employed. The results identify elasticity measures with respect to length of stay, travel party size, and income, and uncover several other statistically significant and economically important determinants of expenditures. As a novel exploratory feature, the paper also analyzes expenditure shares for different categories of tourism goods and services.