A New Approach to the Analysis of the Horse Industry

Mihók, Zsuzsanna

Keywords: Equestrian Revolution, immaterial needs, human development, economic growth, well-being, Q19

The horse has been an ever-present ally of mankind throughout history. Through domestication, horses were placed in the service of humans and since then the roles that the horse has played in human life have always been shaped by the human needs. The most recent change in the horse’s roles has taken place approximately since the 1960s and is of such importance that it can be characterised by the expression of Equestrian Revolution.
The question arises: to what the great demand for horses and horse-related activities is owed in countries such as Iceland, Australia, Sweden, the United States, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom? In the research, I focused on answering this question, to which the operational characterisation of the Hungarian horse industry and its international comparative analysis, together with the estimation of the economic impacts generated by the Hungarian horse industry in 2013 provided the basis.
The results obtained draw attention to the fact that the traditional methods applied to sectorial economics cannot be applied to the horse industry either from the perspectives of the impact categories or from the point of view of taking into account the factors that affect the demand for horses and horse-related activities. The core of the new approach applied to taking into account the factors that shape the demand for horses and horserelated activities is that the strategies for the sustainable and competitive operation of the horse industry can only be formulated in a framework that is determined by human development and economic growth.

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