Climate resilience model on Arctic tourism: perspectives from tourism professionals

ABSTRACT

This study examines tourism professionals’ perceptions of climate change and their reactions to the associated challenges. Sixteen in-depth interviews with tourism professionals who work at Arctic destinations in Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark (i.e. Greenland), reveal that the professionals acknowledge several pressing issues arising from climate change, such as glacier retreating and snow shortfall. It discovers one salient adaptation action in association with snow-related activities. Further, three streams of driving forces prompt the professionals to devise sustainable mitigation actions entailing (1) staging socially responsible and wellbeing tourist experiences, (2) implementing waste programmes friendly to the Arctic ecosystem, and (3) cultivating eco-friendly practices through certifications and educational programmes. Lastly, to further construe the attitudes of tourism professionals, this study elicits the Climate Resilience Model on Arctic Tourism, characterizing the interplay among climate impacts, driving forces, and climate actions by the tourism business across four Arctic nations under study.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptation
• climate change
• mitigation
• qualitative study
• resilience
• sustainability
• the Arctic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph S. Chen

Joseph Chen is Professor of Tourism, Hospitality, and Event Management in the Department of Health and Wellness Design, School of Public Health, Indiana University (Bloomington), USA. He is a co-author of a textbook titled Sustainability in the Hospitality industry: Principle of Sustainable Operations (1st, 2^nd, 3^rd, & 4^th editions) – a pioneer work covering sustainability in the context of hospitality management. His research areas include Arctic tourism, sustainability, tourist experiences, and tourism impacts.

Wei Wang

Wei Wang is Associate Professor in the School of Marketing, College of Business and Economic Development at the University of Southern Mississippi, USA. Dr. Wang's research focuses on destination marketing, new product development, and service innovation. Her research has been disseminated in leading tourism and marketing journals, including Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, among others.

Hyangmi Kim

Hyangmi Kim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences, Lehman College- The City University of New York, USA. Her research interests cover memorable travel experiences and leisure and travel-related activity benefits for individuals with disabilities.

Wan-Yu Liu

Wan-Yu Liu is a distinguished Professor in the Forestry Department, National Chung Hsing University (NCHU), Taiwan. Her research interests include forest policy and economics, forest/farm tourism, environmental economics and modelling, evaluation of GHG reduction policies, as well as forest management. In 2016-2018, she got best paper award from 10th Cross-Strait Forest Management Symposium, Chinese Tourism Management Association Academic Forum, and Taichung City Government Municipal Development Research respectively. Also, in 2019, she got the Outstanding Young Scholar Award in National Chung Hsing University and Outstanding Author Contribution award from Emerald Publishing.