Local food and tourism: an entrepreneurial network approach

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the question: Why local food networks succeed or fail in collaborating with local tourism actors to create more tourism based on local food? The article focuses on entrepreneurial local food networks and their collaboration with local tourism actors. Emphasis is on the actions and attitude logics of local food networks and tourism actors, and whether their respective logics fit as a factor to explain why or why not development of local food concepts lead to increased local tourism. Six local food networks and their collaboration with local tourism actors are studied by using observation supplemented with other qualitative methods. Analysis of these networks reveals that successful collaboration is characterised by the food networks and tourism actors having at least one logic in common. The fitting logics that lead to success are primarily celebrity and civic logics, which emphasises the community aspect (i.e. that both parties want to support the local community and brand it). The non-fitting logics that mostly hinder this are dominant market and industry logic, which emphasise egoistic economic gain.