Tourism responses to climate change: a social network approach

Marta Bystrowska (Specialist at the Ministry of Regional Development, Poland / Ma political sciences and regional development) – marta.bystrowska@gmail.comHin Hoarau-Heemstra (PhD student/ research fellow University of Nordland) – hin.hoarau.heemstra@uin.noKarin Wigger (Managing director at Magic Ice AS; Student of Circumpolar studies at the University of Nordland) – karin.wigger@gmail.com

Tourism responses to climate change: a social network approach

Outline presentation

• Introduction• Theoretical frame• Methodology• Findings• Discussion

Introduction

• Climate change in the Arctic & consequences for tourism on Svalbard

• Innovation as tool for adaptation to changes in the social and natural environment

• Network & system approach to innovation in tourism

Research questionHow is climate change perceived in Svalbard´s tourism

network and how do experience-based companies adapt their products, processes or organization

accordingly?

Contribution

• Arctic cases function as ´canary in the coalmine´ for understanding the impact of climate change on tourism destinations

• Empirical evidence of how network characteristics influence innovation processes in order to adapt to external uncertainties like climate change

• Understanding the impacts of climate on innovative behavior of the tourism industry is relevant for other destinations as well

Theoretical framework

Climate change & tourism

Innovation as responsive initiative

Tourism innovation &

networksTF 1 TF 2 TF 3

TF1: Climate change & tourism

• Climate sensitive & weather dependent tourism

• Mitigation & Adaptation

TF2: innovation

• Innovation as the process of making changes, large and small, radical and incremental, to products, processes, and services that results in the introduction of something new for the organization that adds value to customers and contributes to the knowledge store of the organization.

• Innovation types: product, process, organizational and marketing

• Innovation as strategic reflexive response to the environment interpretation and sense-making occur before action & behaviour

TF3: Innovation as responsive initiative

• Bansal & Roth (2000): model of ecological responsiveness

• Contextual factors & motivations for change– Ecological context– Organizational field context– Individual context

A c i rcu lar understanding of respons ive innovativeness

TF4: Tourism innovation & networks

• relation between cooperation in networks and innovation

• Sharing of knowledge between actors in a network seems to be the main link between network cooperation and innovation.

• network structure influences knowledge sharing between actors

Network elements

• Social network analysis– Survey– Quantitative network analysis– SNA software UCINET 6 version 6.375.

• Qualitative case study tourism destination Svalbard– Semi structured interviews (6 recorded & transcribed)– Informal meetings– Participant observations March/April 2012– Document analysis

Methodology

Findings & discussion

• Case description Svalbard• Svalbard´s tourism destination network• Attitudes towards climate change• Climate change responsiveness– We understand responses with the impacts the different

contexts have on tourism actors.

Network architecture

Dense, coherent and homogeneous network

Conclusions

• Tourism actors on Svalbard know, depend on and trust each other but new, external knowledge is hardly absorbed

• The ecological and organizational field context of Svalbard do not seem to favor a response to CC

• Accurate knowledge about Arctic CC & adaptive innovations are mainly lacking

• Organize tourism destination actors in formal networks to increase their resilience to climate change

The End….

Thank you for your attention!

Questions & suggestions are welcome

Marta, Karin & Hin