 Lifestyle entrepreneurs and their identity construction: A study of the tourism industryRandi Bredvold and Per Skålén Tourism Management, 2016, vol. 56, issue C, 96-105 Abstract: The present study takes issue with the uniform conceptualization of lifestyle entrepreneurs in previous research by drawing on identity theory and life-story interviews with lifestyle entrepreneurs in Norway. This article aims to show how lifestyle entrepreneurs create their entrepreneurial identity and how this identity informs both their entrepreneurial actions in different ways and how they manage the enterprise. On the basis of a narrative understanding of identity this article differentiates between two dimensions of identity construction: (1) socially and culturally embedded versus independent, and (2) flexible versus stable. The main contribution of this study is that embedded or independent and also flexible or stable identity constructions dominate the identity-construction process for individual lifestyle entrepreneurs. On the basis of the latter this article reports four narrative types of lifestyle-entrepreneur identity construction: (1) the modern, (2) the loyal, (3) the freedom-seeking, (4) and the post-modern lifestyle entrepreneur. Keywords: Lifestyle entrepreneurs; Identity; Tourism industry; Life story (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:56:y:2016:i:c:p:96-105 DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2016.03.023 Access Statistics for this article Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier |
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