The diffusion and adoption of eco-innovations amongst tourism businesses: the role of the social system

Chelsea Bell · Lisa Ruhanen

39 citations0/0 files storedTourism Recreation Research

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Environmental Sustainability in Business Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting

Abstract

Businesses within the tourism sector are increasingly engaging in innovative practices and measures to not only sustain growth, but also in response to the changing scale and nature of global environmental change. For some businesses, this has included the development and adoption of eco-innovations. While the tourism literature has considered the issue of business sustainability more broadly, the notion of eco-innovations represents a new area of inquiry with studies yet to fully investigate the adoption of eco-innovations amongst tourism businesses. Given this gap, this study utilises diffusion of innovations theory to explore the diffusion and adoption of eco-innovations by Australian ecotourism businesses, specifically focusing on the role of opinion leaders and change agents in influencing adoption decisions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 ecotourism businesses to explore the diffusion process and identify key actors influencing eco-innovation diffusion and adoption. Although the social system is a key aspect of diffusion theory, it was found that the social system plays less of a role with knowledge awareness and persuasion to adopt eco-innovations more likely to be derived from an individual’s internal drivers and environmental ethics, as opposed to external drivers such as opinion leaders and change agents.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 39 citations exist upstream.

References

1994Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook 1985Naturalistic inquiry 1998Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory 2019Diffusion of Innovations 1 2003Diffusion of innovations.2008Basics of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.): Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory 2002Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches 2008Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory

Cited by

2022Impact of service quality and environmental practices on hotel companies: An empirical approach 2022A systematic review of ethical issues in hospitality and tourism innovation 2024Perceived advantages and disadvantages of information communication technology adoption among restaurants in an emerging economy: A diffusion of innovations view 2023How use of knowledge sources influences eco-innovation in the tourism sector through product innovation and/or process innovation 2025The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing in the Relationship between Social Capital and Frugal Innovation

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.