Entrepreneurship and Sustainability in Tourism: An Interpretative Model

Abstract

Especially in recent years, the attention to sustainability is even more felt in the tourism sector where the consequences of indiscriminate behavior in the exploitation of resources on the environment, on human beings and on their economic activities have become increasingly evident (Jaremen, Nawrocka, & Żemła, 2019). Tourism is often considered as a source of natural and cultural resources’ exploitation, but it also contributes to GHG emissions, being one of the main reasons that pushes the world population to move. On the other hand, tourism-related activities, when correctly designed, can be a strong source of sustainable development. Indeed, tourism products should be sustainable as they depend on local area resources: they are complex products which, on the one hand, should use local resources as a differentiation strategy, on the other hand, hey should factor in the needs of several territory’s stakeholders.
 
 Researchers and institutions have developed many tools to assess tourism environmental impacts focusing both on the local area as a whole or on a given product. For the tourism sector, social and environmental impacts, responses and indicators fall into five categories (Buckley, 2012): population, peace, prosperity, pollution and protection. Moreover, these tools and measures have not been able to increase sustainability of tourism products and the industry is not yet close to sustainability.
 
 In this chapter, we proposed an approach, built around Elkington’s three pillars model (1994), to assess sustainability (Lehtonen, 2004) of tourism products; we focus on products design processes to create a model that help entrepreneurs in assessing if their products are sustainable and where they are their main weaknesses. In order to show how such a simple model can be used to evaluate sustainable tourism initiatives and highlight their weaknesses we have used a multiple case studies approach and we have analyzed three different cases.

Entrepreneurship for sustainable development: co-evolutionary evidence from the tourism sector

“…In fact, while local and global contexts can encourage entrepreneurs and businesses to move towards sustainability, their ability is restricted and only entrepreneurs can bring sustainable actions into reality. This is even more the case in the tourism industry (Papaluca et al, 2020), where entrepreneurs with awareness and commitment to sustainable development help to create new and innovative firms (Paniccia and Leoni, 2019), increasing employment and enhancing identity and heritage through the efficient use of resources, thus ameliorating life quality (Belias et al, 2022;Figueroa-Domecq et al, 2022;Sardianou et al, 2016). At the same time, it is also true that entrepreneurial sustainable-oriented mindsets, motivations and values need to be counterbalanced by knowledge and education, especially at the university level (Ashari et al, 2021;Deale, 2016).…”

“…This is even more the case in the tourism industry (Papaluca et al. , 2020), where entrepreneurs with awareness and commitment to sustainable development help to create new and innovative firms (Paniccia and Leoni, 2019), increasing employment and enhancing identity and heritage through the efficient use of resources, thus ameliorating life quality (Belias et al.…”

Determinants of the Sustainable Entrepreneurial Engagement of Youth in Developing Country—An Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

“…Sustainable entrepreneurship is recognized for the achievement of a sustainable economy. It paves the way for economic growth, social development, and to attend to environmental goals [33].…”