Entrepreneurship in nature-based tourism under a changing climate

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study examining the values and attitudes of nature-based tourism entrepreneurs in relation to adaptation to climate change. The aim is to focus on tourism stakeholders’ values and ideas about tourism entrepreneurship, which may bring interesting new insights to the tourism and climate change research and support the industry in adaptation and mitigation processes. The data utilised in this paper consists of 19 thematic interviews conducted with nature-based tourism entrepreneurs in Finland between 2009 and 2013. Analysis of the data reveal issues concerning views on entrepreneurship in general, on the independence and individuality of the enterprises, on the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders in the processes of adaptation and on the attitudes towards innovations and actions in the changing climate. These issues, together with the rate and scale of the change, seem to affect decision-making by the enterprises, but their importance as predictors of action and behavioural intentions needs to be studied more thoroughly. Additionally, more information is required regarding the role of the surrounding social environment as a co-creator of these kinds of values. However, the study supports previous studies on entrepreneurship and its influence on survival and resilience.

Keywords:

• nature-based tourism
• entrepreneurship
• adaptation
• climate change
• global environmental change
• resilience

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research funded by the Academy of Finland under the FiDiPro programme ‘Human-Environment Relations in the North: resource development, climate change and resilience’, and under the CLICHE-project (Impacts of Climate Change on Arctic Environment, Ecosystem Services and Society). I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments and help in polishing and revising this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.