Abstract
This article shows how combinations of different sustainability approaches of tourism entrepreneurs and other actors restrict nature tourism development in a nature park context. Drawing on the literature on nature tourism and sustainable entrepreneurship and a case study of a Danish nature park, we show how different actors' sustainability orientations cannot clearly be assigned specific theoretical sustainability approaches. Instead, they express different degrees of focus on various parameters of sustainability, thereby shaping the actors' ‘sustainability DNA’. The analysis shows how different DNAs are incommensurable and that this limits nature tourism development. The incommensurability arises from underlying ontological beliefs about sustainability, including the reasons for which sustainability is included in organisational strategies. We suggest a root-cause model to help solve conflicts arising from the incommensurability.
Highlights
This article discusses and illustrates how combinations of different sustainability approaches of tourism entrepreneurs and other actors can present a barrier to the development of nature tourism products in a nature park context
We suggest instead how identifying actors' sustainability DNAs provides a useful path towards analysing different actors' sustainability approaches, understanding their origin, how they can result in conflicts imposing development limitations on nature tourism entrepreneurs, and how this approach can help to address conflicts and development limitations
Small-scale nature tourism entrepreneurs and other actors operating within the park all have sustainability as a core interest in their organisational activities
Summary
This article discusses and illustrates how combinations of different sustainability approaches of tourism entrepreneurs and other actors can present a barrier to the development of nature tourism products in a nature park context. The commodification of nature (Katz, 1998) and the economic importance of nature experiences have increased during recent decades, as has the importance of nature tourism (Margaryan & Fredman, 2017; Matilainen & Lähdesmäki, 2014). This has occurred as the local and global environmental consequences of the growth-oriented tourism industry have become evident (for a review, see Buckley, 2012), and it has become obvious that changes towards more sustainable modes of tourism are required (Sørensen & Bærenholdt, 2020). As a response to the impacts of failed growth-oriented tourism developments (Hall, 2013), new socially and environmentally sustainable green growth, steady-state and degrowth approaches to tourism development have been proposed (Fletcher et al, 2019)
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