Mapping the outcomes of social entrepreneurship and tourism on host communities: a three-dimensional approach

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship has been popularised as a market-based activity with an embedded social purpose aimed at positively transforming communities and society. As a strategy for developing sustainable tourism, social entrepreneurship is promoted as a catalyst for positive community change. This study develops and applies a conceptual model that can help understand the changes directly and indirectly induced by tourism social entrepreneurship (TSE) on host communities. The proposed model integrates three dimensions, namely pace of change, scale of change, and degree of social enterprise control, to logically examine community change brought about by TSE. To operationalise the model, a dual case study research was employed in communities involved in social enterprise-led tourism development in the Philippines. Multiple qualitative data collection methods (semi-structured interviews, community asset mapping workshops, and field observations) and constructivist grounded theory analysis techniques were performed to delineate TSE-induced outcomes. The findings showed four emergent changes, namely lifestyle change, personal development, structural change, and existential change, subsequently interpreted using the three-dimensional model. This study contributes an approach to better explain the outcomes of TSE on host communities, and evidence on the viability of social entrepreneurship as a community-centric tourism development strategy.

Keywords:

• Community change
• three-dimensional model
• tourism impacts
• tourism social entrepreneurship
• social enterprise
• sustainable tourism

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to thank the Auckland University of Technology for the Vice-Chancellor’s Doctoral Scholarship that funded his research. The authors’ sincerest thanks go to Daniel Marc dela Torre for the location maps and Trish Brothers for proofreading this article.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The primary researcher joined in one of the Culion municipal tourism office’s destination resource inventories on the island.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard S. Aquino

Dr Richard S. Aquino is a Lecturer of Tourism and Marketing at the UC Business School, University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His doctoral research focused on how the adoption of social entrepreneurship through tourism changes host communities in his home country, the Philippines. Richard also has expertise in sustainable tourism planning and development, geotourism, tourist behaviour, and recently, the application of native epistemologies in tourism knowledge production. Currently, he serves as the research notes editor of Tourism in Marine Environments and an editor of the Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies.

Michael Lück

Dr Michael Lück is a Professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. He is founding co-chair of the International Coastal & Marine Tourism Society (ICMT S). Michael has more than 10 years work experience in the tourism industry and his research interests include (marine) wildlife tourism, the cruise industry, ecotourism, interpretation and education on wildlife tours, the impacts of tourism, and aviation. He has published in a number of international journals, is founding editor of the academic journal Tourism in Marine Environments, Associate Editor of the Journal of Ecotourism and editorial board member of Marine Policy and Frontiers. Michael has edited or co-edited twelve volumes on ecotourism, marine and polar tourism, events and low cost airlines, as well as the Encyclopedia of Tourism and Recreation in Marine Environments (CABI), and co-authored the introductory text Tourism (2nd ed., CABI).

Heike A. Schänzel

Dr Heike Schänzel is an Associate Professor at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. She completed her PhD in 2010 at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand on family holidays taking gender, generation, and group perspectives and has widely published on families, children, and gender issues in tourism and hospitality. Her research interests include inter-generational relationships and wellbeing, experiential aspects, social sustainability, and social justice issues in tourism. She is passionate about the more equitable facilitation of sociality and meaningful experiences within the context of tourism. Heike is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Tourism Futures and has co-edited books on Femininities in the Field and Masculinities in the Field