N-1/22 Nature-based tourism and community resilience: Framework and application with a firm perspective

There is a substantial and growing literature on the resilience of firms and destinations within tourism.  Building on the concepts in Lindberg, Forbord, and Sivertsvik (2021), this study complements that literature by empirically assessing nature-based tourism’s (NBT’s) potential contribution to the resilience of destination communities via the factors that may affect that contribution.  The study is based on a country-level assessment in Norway using quantitative and qualitative data derived from NBT firms, a new scale for understanding the contribution associated with firm-community relationships, and an evaluation of how firm motivations and life cycle stage may affect the contribution.  Results indicated NBT makes a modest contribution overall, but that contribution may be more substantial in some aspects (e.g., with respect to catalyzing business networks and community identity) and in some communities (e.g., smaller communities where NBT potentially represents a larger part of the local economy).  Some aspects of this contribution were predicted by firm motivations and life cycle stage.  For example, firms in the growth stage may make larger contributions than firms in the decline stages.