Shopping behaviour in the Øresund region before and after the establishment of the fixed link between Denmark and Sweden

Abstract

In July 2000 the 15.5 km long fixed link across the Øresund was opened, connecting the Danish capital Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmö. With the decrease of the barrier an enlarged flow of shoppers was expected with Swedish customers availing themselves of the range of opportunities in the Copenhagen area and Danish customers making use of the much longer shop opening hours in Sweden. However, experience from other European border areas shows that customers tend to do their ordinary shopping in their home countries and that there must be significant differences in prices or ranges of goods to overcome the barrier of the border. Does the typical situation result from the rural nature of many border areas, and will matters be quite different in a metropolitan area? The purpose of the present paper is to describe the level and character of cross-border shopping by the residents of the Øresund region before and after the opening of the fixed link. Responses from about 4,000 people form the basis of the conclusion that a little less than a year after the opening of the fixed link the number of shopping trips across the Øresund had increased, but there was still no heavy flow of customers doing ordinary shopping in the neighbouring countries. In order to assess the level of cross-border shopping across the Øresund the findings are compared to those from surveys across the Danish-German land border.