Entrepreneurs’ Self-Perception of Skills in Rural Tourism

Conceição Castro,Fernanda Ferreira

doi:10.54055/ejtr.v21i.358

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the perception of entrepreneurial and personal maturity skills among owners of rural tourism businesses and structure these skills. The main obstacles to entrepreneurship felt by these entrepreneurs are also analysed. Using the results of a survey of rural tourism businesses in Northern Portugal, exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted. The data was evaluated through CFA, using Analysis of Moment Structure and performed a Structural Equation Model. The CFA led to two distinct factors: one includes emotional coping, critical evaluation and networking (personal maturity) skills, while the other (entrepreneurial) includes goal setting and environment scanning skills. The findings reveal, after a cluster analysis based on the resulting component scores, three different groups of entrepreneurs with different perception of competencies, background and type of business. The owners/managers encountered some restrictions in the start-up process as the bureaucracy and the lack of financial support and information. Studying rural tourism owner´s perceived entrepreneurial competencies provide advances in identifying its dimensionality and corresponding profiles and help defining strategies to enhance them, in order to promote success and local development.

Highlights

Since the 70's, in order to respond to the increase in tourism demand and as a way to find solutions to the reduction of agricultural activity and the migration from rural areas, rural tourism emerges as a fundamental activity for the development of these areas
Based on all functional competencies defined by Phelan and Sharpley (2012) related with entrepreneurial and personal maturity skills of owners/managers of rural tourism, this paper aims to structure them, identifying which underlying competencies best define the entrepreneurial and the personal maturity skills based on data and establish relations between them
From a rural development perspective, tourism in rural areas can play an important role in ensuring the revitalization of these areas

Summary

Introduction

Since the 70's, in order to respond to the increase in tourism demand and as a way to find solutions to the reduction of agricultural activity and the migration from rural areas, rural tourism emerges as a fundamental activity for the development of these areas. Rural tourism is an important activity in Europe in terms of turnover and employment, composed by a large number of private micro enterprises. This sector is very fragmented, with a lot of competition both internally and externally and with the prevalence of parttime/pluriactivity jobs (Lane et al, 2013). Rural tourism in Northern Portugal has been growing, both in terms of demand and supply, and as in other European regions it is dominated by micro and small businesses, whose success depends to a great extent on the entrepreneurial competencies of the promoters (Milheiro, Martins and Alves, 2013). In the process of entrepreneurship, mainly in small enterprises, the role of the entrepreneur is crucial

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