This licentiate thesis investigates visitor compliance with funding models for recreational infrastructure in legally and geographically open access settings, where payment is requested but not enforceable. Focusing on Swedish cross-country ski trails, the thesis examines how compliance with trail pass systems can be understood and assessed in the context of public access rights and commercial service provision. By combining qualitative interviews with cross-country skiers (Paper I) about the reasons for compliance with a quantitative data-driven triangulation to assess the compliance rate (Paper II), the thesis provides a mixed-methods perspective on compliance behaviour. The findings challenge traditional compliance theories that separate compliance in the context of private and legally enforceable goods from compliance in the context of common goods, arguing that open access products must be understood and conceptualised as a mixture of both, given that they are operating within a legal grey zone. A visualisation presents compliance in the context of private and common goods and where these domains intertwine. Social norms, including perceived peer behaviour, perceived transparency, trust, and fairness in the provider and personal conviction and reward, partly based on legal frameworks, emerge as critical interlinking factors that guide compliance behaviour in the study context. The assessment of a compliance rate can be complemented by focussing on enhancing the social norm of paying for groomed trails and perceived compliance of peers.

The thesis advances research on nature-based tourism and outdoor recreation management, working toward a better understanding of how tourism infrastructure that depends on visitor compliance can be sustainably financed using behavioural insights. It draws on compliance and behavioural theory to better understand request-following in contexts where legal enforcement is limited or absent.

The findings have practical relevance for trail providers, policy makers and tourism destination managers to consider for the framing of payment requests.