Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

• Published in: Journal of Sustainable Tourism
• Main Authors: van Bets, L.K.J., Lamers, M.A.J., van Tatenhove, J.P.M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Svalbard; collective self-governance; expedition cruise tourism; information systems; marine community
• Online Access: https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/collective-self-governance-in-a-marine-community-expedition-cruis; https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2017.1291653

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective self-governance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by co-existence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective self-governance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.