Second homes contribute to significant environmental challenges. Despite political goals on restricting land use and dampening negative impacts, the building of second homes in Norway and elsewhere seems to have been little affected by such policies to date. Land use planning is crucial in deciding development of second homes, and in Norway it has been discussed for decades how such planning could be done more sustainably. The objective of the article is to explore promising ways forward for more environmentally sustainable second home planning through a comprehensive review of literature on characteristics of development trends for second homes and the planning and governance system, and drawing on theories on scales and governance of environmental problems. The main finding and conclusion is that planning of second homes must remain at the local level where most other land use is allocated, but their planning needs to be more strongly governed, framed and supported by national and regional levels, in a collective multilevel effort. A further finding and conclusion is that specific second home policies are mostly needed in relatively few high-pressure areas.
