Document Type
Article
Abstract
This study examines the impact of ski tourism on Colorado’s retail marijuana (RMJ) sales, leveraging county-level sales data and ski resort characteristics. Using a two-way fixed effects model, we analyze seasonal variations in RMJ sales across counties with differing ski resort acreages. Our findings indicate that ski resort counties experience significant increases in RMJ sales during peak ski months (December–March), with the most prominent effects observed in counties with the largest ski resorts. The largest ski resort county– Summit County– sees an estimated seasonal increase of $4.35 million in RMJ sales. We estimate the isolated extra-state ski tourism effects and find that while some sales may shift from non-ski counties, the net increase in RMJ sales for the top ski resort counties remains economically significant. Our set of results suggest ski tourism increases Col orado’s retail marijuana sales between $4.5 M and $9.4 M per year.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Tourism Economics, 2026.
APA Citation
Hess, J. H., & Bassock, I. (2026). Green runs: Colorado cannabis sales during ski season. Tourism Economics.https://doi.org/10.1177/13548166261419621
Rights
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.