Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

Abstract

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective selfgovernance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by coexistence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective selfgovernance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.

The Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Managing High Arctic Tourism Sites: A Collective Action Perspective

“…Currently, AECO's ICT systems are not fully integrated with Svalbard's governmental tourism management systems, and operators have to report through different systems at the same time. This creates confusion among operators and results in trade-offs being made between investing time and resources in reporting on activities and undertaking the actual tourism activities themselves [15]. By providing alternative tools to those introduced by governmental authorities, AECO, as a network of resource users, partially takes over responsibilities of tourism governance and in-situ management [28] and may even be more effective than the government in managing tourism sites.…”

“…Case study methodology allows for the exploration of a complex phenomenon, such as the relationship between ICT use and sustainable management of tourism sites, within a well-defined situational context [63]. Building on the argument that ICT can change the organisational principles of collective action and that it can, thereby, influence the sustainable management of tourism sites [15,19], a single case study approach enables to explore the use of ICT in ensuring the quality of tourism. It also provides room for personal interactions between the researchers and the participants, while giving study participants the opportunity to describe their views on ICT use and sustainable management of tourism sites within the Arctic context they operate [63].…”

“…Arctic tourism sites are characterized by remoteness, short seasons, limited or absent human population and the dominance of multi-national tourism operators who only visit Arctic locations on a short-term basis [15]. These characteristics provide challenges for collective action [16] as there is a limited monitoring capability and control over the behaviour of individual operators and also impeded coordination of action.…”

“…These characteristics provide challenges for collective action [16] as there is a limited monitoring capability and control over the behaviour of individual operators and also impeded coordination of action. Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) lead to rapid changes within the tourism industry, and prior studies indicate that the application of ICT can support the sustainable management of tourism sites [15,17,18].…”

Sustainable Tourism and Natural Resource Conservation in the Polar Regions: An Editorial

“…These are astounding figures indeed from three Arctic mass tourism destinations. Of course, considerable geographical variation in inbound tourism numbers and growth exists, and in addition to mass tourism sites, numerous ecotourism niches are present in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, for example expedition cruising [9]. Nevertheless, where inbound tourism grows, so does the economic value of tourism (at local, regional and national levels), including the hard-to-measure socio-cultural and environmental effects the sector has.…”