This paper presents the first results from a newly developed BI (business intelligence) model for the Swedish horse industry. Compared to previous studies of the impact from the horse industry we are able to present both figures for the national level as well as a decomposition to regional levels.
The size of the horse industry in Sweden for 2016, is measured departing from the expenditure approach, i.e. summing the final use of horse related goods and services. One implication of the approach is that results are comparable with overall GDP figures for a country and with other subsectors of an economy, e.g. the tourism industry or the car producing industry. The model has two main inputs. Firstly, estimates of the geographical position of all Sweden’s 355.500 horses of different type and use, based on JBVs statistics and postal codes from horse associations. Secondly, estimates of the horse owner’s consumption pattern related to their leisure or professional use. Other horse related activities like riding schools, education, race tracks, betting etc. is treated separately, measured and added to the overall calculation.
The preliminary results indicate that the horse industry in Sweden amounts to somewhere in the interval of 26-32 Billion SEK corresponding to approximately 0,5-0,6 percentage of Swedish GDP. Looking at regional variations, the region of Skåne has most horses and consistently also the region with largest share of the horse industry.