Abstract
Tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs play an essential role in the innovation, sustainability, and competitiveness of tourism destinations. Thus, the ability of a destination to attract and retain this type of entrepreneur is an essential factor in strategic decisions. The limited research on this class of entrepreneurs implies that decision makers have little information about the factors that contribute to their willingness to stay in a particular destination. To address this challenge, this study employs a mixed-method approach, combining a quantitative survey-based study with a qualitative study by means of in-depth interviews. Based on survey data and using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this study identifies three equifinal configurations of antecedent factors (entrepreneurial self-efficacy, community-centered strategy, community attachment, and place attachment) that lead to a willingness to stay. Place attachment is the single-core condition. Moreover, the findings show that TLEs are not a homogeneous group. On the contrary, these entrepreneurs are driven by different motives and personal backgrounds. These results represent important insights for the definition of more sustainable strategies in destinations.
Highlights
Differentiation is an essential imperative for the competitiveness of tourism destinations
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method was conducted by means of IBM SPSS-AMOS 25.0 software to assess the reliability and validity of the latent variables
The consistency and coverage were calculated using the formulas proposed by Ragin (2008) and presented by Corne and Peypoch [39], which were the formulas used for the results presented in Table 3, showing that the intermediate solution for high willingness to stay comprised three configurations
Summary
Differentiation is an essential imperative for the competitiveness of tourism destinations. To this end, innovation through genuine and differentiating experiences is essential [1]. TLEs can be defined as business owners that are primarily motivated by lifestyle and quality of life reasons. As such, their businesses are operated by incorporating non-financial factors [4]. Their businesses are operated by incorporating non-financial factors [4] They can be either locals or migrants who move to a location to start a tourism business [5]
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