Driving Business Models Toward Sustainability in Arctic Nature Tourism

Abstract

Context: research into sustainability as a highly debated concept has become widespread and given rise to a diverse and interesting arena in the management literature in which the relevance of business models is extensively acknowledged. Objective: by integrating sustainability into the business model concept, this study attempts to determine how business models are driven toward sustainability. Methods: a qualitative multiple-case approach is applied to scrutinize five small/micro companies offering nature-based activities in Arctic Norway. Results: four internal and six external drivers are found crucial to incorporating sustainability in business models. Conclusion: the findings contribute to the field of sustainable business models by deepening the understanding of how specific internal and external drivers operate across different business models. Moreover, business models are driven toward sustainability differently, depending on the extent to which sustainability is embedded into them.

Integrating the natural environment into tourism firms’ business model for sustainability

“…Third, the BM of a tourism firm that achieves the desired level of competitiveness and profitability by attaining a lasting balance between socioeconomic and environmental goals is sustainable, i.e., SBM. In this vein, the positive consequences of the SBM of tourism firms have been highlighted but have mainly focused on the social and economic dimensions of sustainability (Daniele et al 2017;Cucari et al 2020;Sahebalzamani 2020). Few scholars have examined the positive contribution of tourism BMs to all three sustainability dimensions by analyzing agritourism BMs and identifying them as SBMs (Broccardo et al 2017;Paniccia and Baiocco 2021).…”

Perspectives of Sustainability

“…The paper "Driving business models toward sustainability in arctic nature tourism" (Sahebalzamani, 2021) looks at what drives sustainability in the tourism sector in the arctic. Building on the BM literature, in particular BM innovation and sustainability orientation (Andreini & Bettinelli, 2017;Breuer, Fichter, Lüdeke-Freund, & Tiemann, 2018), the paper performs a quality study among tourism companies in northern Norway and points to certain issues as important drivers for a business to develop SBMs.…”