Tourism as an innovation and the relevant-innovation-witnesses

Abstract

ABSTRACT Tourism and innovation research tends to focus on the innovations created and diffused in/among tourism enterprises and tourists; How these innovations go beyond their intended target group has been neglected. This study integrates [Johannessen, J. A., Olsen, B., & Lumpkin, G. T. (2001). Innovation as newness: What is new, how new, and new to whom? European Journal of Innovation Management] – newness-related questions ‘What is new? How new? and new to who?’ – and Rogers’ (2003) innovation-decision process as a framework to identify the primary and secondary attributes of a tourism-related entrepreneurship from the perspectives of the relevant-adoption-units, and this study’s contribution, the relevant-innovation-witnesses. A qualitative study was carried out in Tsurui village, Japan. The study reveals how the proposed theoretical framework helps identify what adopters and non-adopters perceive are a tourism-related innovation’s attributes. This study is considered a first step to acknowledge the effects and agency that certain non-adopters have on tourism innovations’ conceptualization and how the innovation, at the same time, can affect others besides adopters.