Barriers to Start and Develop Transformative Ecotourism Business

Vidickienė Dalia (), Gedminaite-Raudone Zivile (), Vilke Rita (), Chmielinski Pawel () and Zobena Aija ()
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Vidickienė Dalia: Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Institute of Economics and Rural Development, Vilnius, Lithuania
Gedminaite-Raudone Zivile: Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Institute of Economics and Rural Development, Vilnius, Lithuania
Vilke Rita: Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Institute of Economics and Rural Development, Vilnius, Lithuania
Chmielinski Pawel: President of the European Rural Development Network and Professor at the Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences; Warszawa, Poland
Zobena Aija: director of the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Latvia; Riga, Latvija

European Countryside, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 734-749

Abstract: This article aims to fill the cognitive gap by providing evidence for different barriers hampering the innovative activity in ecotourism which concerns the promotion of the so-called transformative tourism concept. The research is devoted to identifying what are the most important barriers in the two areas: i) policy and regulation; ii) regional economic development. The observed absence of appropriate representative data for defining the state of the art in the field of transformative ecotourism as a new phenomenon is evident; therefore, it is suggested to use an expert survey for barriers identification in the field. The expert survey was done in the four post-socialist Baltic Sea countries/regions: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the St. Petersburg region (Russia) in autumn 2020. Research results disclose the existing similarities among barriers in researched regions and highlight the key areas for improvement in policy and regulation and economy-related fields, aiming to create a more favorable environment for promoting transformative ecotourism as prosperous innovation of future tourism.

Keywords: eco-innovation; ecotourism; policy; regional economic development; servitization; transformative tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:eurcou:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:734-749:n:5

DOI: 10.2478/euco-2021-0039

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