INTRODUCTION
Social science disciplines have seen governance as a trigger for new thinking and new developments after the advent of globalization and democratization, each one through different lenses (Chhotray and Stoker 2009). Considered as a polysemic concept, broad in its interpretation and used by many lines and schools of thought (Farinós Dasi 2008),
governance is a political activity related to the coordination and decision-making processes. It can express different modes of action taking, from governments to companies, to better understand their practices in different scopes (Chhotray and Stoker 2009, 6). Governance can influence and balance interactions, forces and social interests, establishing a normative basis which allows actors and social systems to organize themselves (Kooiman 1994 , 2003).
Given its multidisciplinary nature, studies on tourism have reflected this concern in analysing governance practices, to examine policy and decision-making processes that affect destinations activities.
The process of developing and sustaining tourism is complex and dependent on exogenous and endogenous factors that are not always controllable, interaction of people, markets, places and policies (Tomazzoni 2009). It is believed that this process can be more robust due to the entrepreneurial spirit of the various local agents, whose actions contribute to the dynamism of local production and to the diversification of the offer (Dallabrida 2010;Tomazzoni 2009). The role of public institutions also stands out, as they hold the intervention instruments and the capacity to act in the different phases of the destinations’ development, or because they hold part of the resources to be used in tourism (Bramwell and Lane 2011;Gunn and Var 2002;Hall 2011a).
Tourism governance is understood as the process by which governments coordinate destination management at different scales through synergistic efforts, which include the private tourism sector and non-governmental organizations. It seems to positively influence the maximization of tourism benefits in the economy, environment, and society, according toFuentes (2016, 318). The achieved synergies when combined with the policies of decentralization of responsibilities for tourism management, form the basis for the desired economic, social, and environmental sustainability (World Tourism Organization 2013), and it is important to highlight in this respect that the trend of decentralization political power is a worldwide phenomenon (INRouTe and UNWTO 2016).
At the local level, public actors are responsible for relational dynamics and for the aggregation of the productive sectors, also aiming to fulfil the purposes proposed in national policies. A tourist destination, beyond the limits of a place or a municipality, can be configured as a destination region composed of geographically close, similar or distinct locations, capable of attracting a considerable flow of people. Therefore, the responsibility for the dynamics of management becomes a more complex process. The local interrelationships present more challenges to public and private managers for the maintenance of the attraction factors and for the existence of a consistent, diversified and adequate offer.
Considering the above, the purpose of this research is to examine the governance approach in tourism studies, identifying the perspectives applied and highlighting their main characteristics and focus. This analytical research is limited to articles published in academic journals listed in the SCOPUS database between 1999 and 2020. Since the research involved a broad set of publications, the data were analysed through two different processes. The first process consisted of content analysis of abstracts and was performed with the support of ALCESTE. In the second, the articles (full text) were examined and manually categorized.
The first section of this paper presents the conceptual aspects of governance theory, and its implications in tourism issues. Thereafter, the search and analysis processes are detailed. The subsequent section provides a broad overview of the papers’ content resulting from the ALCESTE analysis, followed by a description of the characteristics of the studies categorized and the final considerations.
1. CONCEPTUAL ASPECTS OF GOVERNANCE THEORY
Concerned with the steering actions of political authorities, governance theory emerged after the Second World War, a period in which attempts were made to establish socioeconomic structures and processes (Mayntz 2003). At that time, the German and the British schools of thought provided the basis for its development. Since the latter was focused on the procedural aspect of governing, to a certain extent, it complemented the institutional perspective of the German school (Mayntz 2003, 27).
After some decades, the world has undergone great economic changes and interconnectedness and mobility dominate the scenario. Under the effect of the phenomena of globalization and democratization, implemented in several nations in late 1990, the term ‘governance’ and its theory emerged in a new context (Chhotray and Stoker 2009). Patterns of production, consumption, trade, transnational companies, the growing disparities between countries, and the consolidation of economic blocks are facts that reflect the complex new global dynamics and represented a challenge to the theory (Chhotray and Stoker 2009;Mayntz 2003). In this sense,Mayntz (2003) points out the emergence of other considerations about governance which are distinct from the original concern – the political guidance. The first refers to a more co-operative mode of governing, which considers the relations between state and non-state actors (public-private networks). The second one to different modes of social action coordination (association, networks, etc.). The former concerns to the policy-making process at the national and sub-national level, the latter turned to the transnational level (e.g. European Union) which led to the generalization of the term (governance) in an attempt to explain modes of social coordination in sectors other than the economy (Mayntz 2003, 27). Additionally, involving aspects of both perspectives, a third consideration is concerned with issues of international relations, the transnational and international regulatory structures such as the World Bank and the United Nations, reflecting global economic and social dynamics (Mayntz 2003).
The democratic processes observed throughout the world have led to new forms of thinking about governance. In this sense,Bevir (2011a, 2), in line with the first above-mentioned perspective, considers that governance refers to new theories, practices of governing and dilemmas. Recognizing that current patterns of governance combine different actors, institutions, sectors and levels of government in the policy-making process,Bevir (2011a) explains that these new theories emphasize networks and markets, drawing attention to complex processes and interactions that constitute patterns of governing. The new practices, in turn, create dilemmas that require new governing strategies to span jurisdictions, link people across different levels of government and combine social interests and a variety of actors. Governance refers to “activity” – how people act and how they might act more effectively and justly (Bevir, 2011b, 11). Considering the aforementioned, the set of governance-related theories, practices and dilemmas organized byBevir (2011b) are shown inTable 1.
Source: Adapted fromBevir, 2011b
2. GOVERNANCE IN TOURISM
Some of the tourism issues analysed through the lens of governance refer to formal and informal destination structures, the results of coordination and steering processes, as well as the relational dynamics between public, private and non-governmental actors. Tourism governance underpins discussions on the role of government in tourism planning and development, and the influence of policies on destinations (Bramwell and Lane 2000;Hall 1994;Hall and Jenkins 1995;Jenkins 1980;Jenkins and Henry 1982).
At the destination scale, tourism governance implies complex and comprehensive coordination that can influence destination competitiveness (Bruyn and Alonso 2012). The approach of governance theory and concepts in tourism studies has focused on the structures, processes and relational characteristics present in the different modes of management of tourist destinations (Bramwell and Lane 2011;Hall 2011a;Wan and Bramwell 2015), either through formal or informal arrangements. As observed byBeaumont and Dredge (2010), studies on tourism governance highlight the effects or impacts of communication, trust creation, legitimacy, knowledge development and transference among tourism actors within different network arrangements, evidencing their mode of operation and the outcomes obtained thereby.
Tourism in a general way, is a fragile and volatile sector, more affected than other economic areas by adverse incidents whether man-made or natural (Sausmarez 2007). The industry has recently faced several crises, which have had a detrimental impact on tourist destinations. As a result, more attention is now being paid to the consequences of adverse events (Aschauer 2010). Crises often play an important part in policy learning and paradigm change (Hall 2011b). During the recession of the 1970s, the perceived failings of hierarchical approaches ‘led to public sector reforms intended to advance marketization’ (Bevir 2011a, p. 6). Similarly, the failure of neoliberal governance modes via financial deregulation, marketization and public-private partnerships that frame current economic and environmental crises are feeding demands for another paradigm shift in policy learning and policymaking (Hall 2011b).
Despite the seeming dominance of new public management thinking, with its emphasis on polycentric approaches to policymaking and planning, and the significance of public-private partnerships, questions are increasingly being raised whether traditional modes of governance can still provide appropriate responses to societal issues (Ágh 2010;Bell and Hindmoor 2009;Torfing 2014). However, what currently exists in many developed countries is a complex network of hybrid and multi-jurisdictional forms of governance (Bevir 2011a), through which the state, policy actors, private interests and civic society aim at resolving ‘societal problems or creating societal opportunities’ (Meuleman 2008, 11).
Even though tourism governance research is considered recent, some literature reviews on this subject are already known.Ruhanen et al. (2010) conducted a review of 53 published studies, which resulted in the identification and classification of 40 governance dimensions based on political science and corporate management. In a review conducted byBarbini (2012), 20 studies involving different territorial scales evidenced the diversity of the conceptualization of governance. The same situation was identified byBorges, Eusébio, and Carvalho (2014) in a review focused on tourism governance, destinations and sustainable development. Another example is the study carried out byPeters and Strobl (2015) that, based on 16 case studies, sought to identify governance patterns in different destination configurations.
The intention of the study presented below is to give a practical contribution to further researches, taking into account (a) the large number of studies covered by the analysis and (b) information extracted, which (c) offers a comprehensive view on the subject, since it is not limited to any related tourism governance sub-theme or variants.
3. METHODOLOGY
To achieve the objective of examining the governance approach in tourism-related studies and providing a comprehensive view of its characteristics, this study reviews articles published in academic journals listed in the SCOPUS database, considered as “the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature” (Elsevier 2016).
The Scopus database was adopted due to the quality and importance of its relevant journals in tourism research. It offers comprehensive search options, a good degree of customization and containing different tools that allow researchers to analyze and compare literature by the inclusion/search criteria/interest.
The terms “governance” and “tourism” were used as the main subject, and by default, in search fields Title-Abstract-Key, limited to: social science; business, management and accounting; economics, econometrics and finance; and decision sciences, as subject areas – with the awareness that a field of study such as tourism touches on multiple scientific areas and resorts to techniques and approaches of different academic traditions. To obtain a wide coverage of publications, the search considered the entire range available in that range of dates (1962-2020). Under the above-described conditions, the first available publication dated from 1999, circumscribing the period covered in this analysis from 1999 to 2020. The search resulted in 397 publications, of which 93 publications were discarded as they clearly did not address the search themes. The 304 articles of this set have the terms “governance” and “tourism” as indexed or authors’ keywords, including their variants (e.g., corporate governance, governance approach or sustainable tourism, tourism management, tourism development, and so forth).
Since the abstracts are written in English and have a very similar structure, it was possible to perform automatic analysis, done with the support of ALCESTE – a textual data analysis software. The use of statistical methods of textual analysis, the basis of ALCESTE's operation, offers an exploratory approach, revealing the content of the text, considering key words in their natural context (keyword-in-context data analysis).
ALCESTE is a method that, from the statistical analysis of words (their repetitions and successions), reveals the dominant meanings in texts through thematic classes. The objective of the method is to approach the lexical worlds of a corpus without having to question the problem of its content beforehand. It is the dynamics of the discourse itself that leads to distinguish the different anchors or lexical points (Image-Zafar 2017). The corpus interpretation is based on quantitative criteria and not on the researcher's subjective perception (Guerin-Pace 1998), unlike what happens when using programs like Atlas.ti or NVivo (representation analysis). Thus, the method is suitable for obtaining the overview of voluminous documents in terms of content, which would be long and exhaustive analysis to be performed manually.
ALCESTE was used to obtain a broad view of data in the abstracts such as theme, objectives, methodology and results and to identify the governance approach and other information. The use of this program in tourism studies is still scarce, which contributed to evaluating its usefulness for this type of analysis. For this automatic process, 304 abstracts were transcribed and prepared following the program’s specifications. Subsequently, the articles were submitted to an examination to confirm the content expressed in their abstracts and to collect more data. During the latter process, 80 publications were discarded – those with access restriction (paid articles) and written in a language other than Portuguese, English or Spanish, and classified as article.Table 2 expresses these steps, indicating the search results, the selection process, and the type of analysis involved.
Source: own elaboration
4. DATA ANALYSIS PROCESS
ALCESTE is an acronym for Analyse des Lexèmes Co-occurents dan le Enoncés Simples d’un Texte (analysis of the co-ocurrent lexemes in simple statements of a text). As a positioning text analysis program, it performs the co-occurrence analysis of key words of a text in their natural context (Illia, Sonpar and Bauer 2014, 3). The statistical classification of the text then reveals the most characteristic words of the corpus. The analysis results from two types of representation methods – factorial and classification.
ALCESTE emphasizes the hierarchical method of classification: (1) descending hierarchical, a peculiarity of the program, classifies the contextual textual units, and (2) ascending classification that represents the distances between the words of the text. The latter is used only as a complement to the representation of the links between the classes, to present the most frequent words or local relations between forms of the same class. The objective of the classification method is to approach the lexical words of a corpus without having to question the problem of its content in advance. The text dynamics lead to distinguishing the different lexical points, and through an iterative process of repetitions and successions of words, the dominant meanings are revealed through thematic classes (Image-Zafar 2017).
The analysis process done by ALCESTE starts with the insertion of the units of initial context (in the case, the 304 abstracts as 304 units), considering three approaches: (1) lexical analysis – lexical statistics and lexicometry; (2) content analysis – split the text into units of context; and (3) data analysis – classification of these units of context. The context units “any segment of text that can serve as a support for the study of co-occurrences”, whose objective is to quantify the text to extract the strongest meaningful structures (Image-Zafar 2017). These small context units serve as ‘snapshots’ in the movement of meaning and of a place. The analysis provides a typological description of these “snapshots” based on the links between them, considering the co-occurrences between words. The classes obtained by an iterative process are then classes of text units that have a close vocabulary distribution, the so-called meaning vector in the class (Image-Zafar 2017).
Once the automatic analysis process is started, the program executes four steps, each containing at least three operations. First, the program reads the text and calculates dictionaries. The first segmentation of the text occurs in this step, and it then groups the occurrences of the words according to their roots (lemmatization) and calculates the frequency of these reduced forms. In the second step, the program crosses the matrices of the reduced forms and the context units and processes the descending hierarchical classification. In the third step, the description of the classes, the formation of the descending hierarchical classification dendrogram and the representation of the relations between classes through the factorial analysis of the correspondences take place (Camargo 2005). Both the chi2 and Phi coefficients of association allow measuring the link between a form and its class (Image-Zafar 2017). Finally, it presents the most representative textual units of each class, the ascending hierarchical classification and the most characteristic words of each class (Camargo 2005).
According toIllia, Sonpar, and Bauer (2014, 5), there are some advantages in using ALCESTE to analyse a “large set of data in a reasonable amount of time using a non-predefined dictionary, which scans the entire text”. These authors also state that its methodology minimizes the manual coding bias as well as the inference of words – in addition, the program tests the “robustness of text comparison, provides qualitative or quantitative results visualization” and “provides significance of quotations and/or words with text/discourse” (Illia, Sonpar and Bauer 2014, 5).
Performed with 2018 version of ALCESTE, analysis of the 304 abstracts was done using the default parameters (standard analysis). The classification resulted in four classes, each one a minimum number of 55 elementary units of context.
Although the automatic analysis allows the recognition of what is typical or untypical of the co-use words such as “governance” and “tourism”, a general identification of the abstract’s characteristics or the most frequent words and their associations, it was necessary to examine the content of the articles since the abstracts do not reveal detailed information. Since ALCESTE requires a homogeneous corpus with a certain coherence to result in a meaningful analysis, examination of the articles had to be done manually.
5. RESULTS OF THE ALCESTE ANALYSIS
ALCESTE classified 98% of the corpus distributed in four classes (Figure 1). As a reference, “80% and over is the accepted indicator of a strong analysis” (Hohl, Tsirogianni and Gerber 2012, 18). The four classes are the result of the two successive classifications to retain the most stable classes, characteristic of the software.
Source: own study – extracted from ALCESTE
The descending hierarchical classification represented inFigure 1 shows the most significant presences for each word or forms according to the chi² values.
Class 1, the first to be detached in the classification tree (Figure 1), has the most homogeneous vocabulary, and represents 46,43% of the classified text units. In this class, the textual units reveal the emphasis on leadership, destination management, corporate governance and collaboration networks. Some studies aim to examine the influence of governance on destinations organizations and analyse tourism management structures, attitudes towards the tourism development, the relationship between public and non-public actors and evaluate planning processes. The Destination Management Organizations and Regional Tourism Organizations receive attention in discussions regarding the ability in building cooperative relationships among local tourism actors and promote competitiveness. The performance of public agents towards to the sustainable development is evident. Although classes 2, 3 and 4 reveal different aspects of sustainability, the form “sustain” in Class 1 indicates its relation to the planning processes. Studies on governance in destinations turn to local management and sustainable development based on economic and social issues, and to a lesser extent, those related to the environment.
A sample of the text units related to this class can be seen inTable 3. The most characteristic forms of the class are indicated in parentheses. The academic journals associated with the context of Class 1 are Tourism Management, Tourism Review, Anatolia and Journal of Travel Research.
Source: own elaboration based on ALCESTE analysis report
Class 2 contains 17,47% of the classified text units. Discussions related to this class involve issues as the non-public actors’ participation in policymaking processes and sustainable development. It is also related to discourses analysis about this participation. Studies in this class seek to understand power relations when policies refer to community, its participation in tourism and community-based management, especially of protected areas. Some practices that negatively affect communities are part of this context. Places identified in this class are Tanzania, Madagascar, Indonesia, Fiji, Laos, Cambodia, Greenland and Hong Kong.
Table 4 presents some of the context units of Class 2. The most characteristic articles of its context are associated with the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Asian Education and Development Studies and Journal of Ecotourism.
Source: own elaboration based on ALCESTE analysis report
Representing 17,13% of classified text units and presenting a context close to Class 2, Class 3 concentrates most of the prepositions of movement, indicating dynamics or opposite directions. The context of this class exposes the contemporary realities that have altered the daily lives of cities and natural areas while there is a concern with the restoration, revitalization, and conservation of material and cultural heritage. In this sense, governance is related to plans that contemplate these actions. Issues such as collaboration, practice, and relationships among non-public actors (i.e., stakeholders) are distant or even absent of this context. The analyses evidence social and economic circumstances on heritage sites. As they are considered as touristic resources, the degradation of heritage sites is the subject of discussion, particularly about those located in peripheral areas, the strategies to qualify labour, to inform tourists and raise their awareness about local cultures, as well as developing destination image. Some studies highlight the climatic and tourism impacts over natural areas, including coastal ones. One article refers to an important and recent impact that affected tourism, the Covid pandemic in South Africa (Rogerson and Rogerson 2020).
The academic journals associated with the context of class 3 are Cahiers de Geographie du Quebec, Polar Record, Espace-Populations-Societes, International Journal of Ecology and Development, Global Environmental Change.
Source: own elaboration based on ALCESTE analysis report
Class 4 reveals the community relations with tourism. In this context, conflicts of economic interests, the encouragement of local participation in tourist activities – as a way to improve employment and income, as well the access of small entrepreneurs to programmes are pointed out. Difficulties faced by rural communities are evidenced, such as the business maintenance due to the seasonality. Likewise, power asymmetries hamper the sustainability of natural resources and communities' access to them. Also, concerns about resources management – strategies and effectiveness, and tourism fees to fund services in protected areas. In Class 4 it is emphasized the participation, or not, of local communities in governance, especially in protected natural areas, as parks. The discussions move away from political issues and governance structures to focus on communities and sustainable development. The environmental impacts caused by tourist activity are also pointed out (solid waste, water access, land erosion, landscape pollution, fauna, and flora destruction). The most representative sites in this Class are parks, including marine areas, and countries such as Norway, Niagara, Bosnia, Herzegovina, British Columbia, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Ireland, and Croatia.
Class 4 reveals the techniques of data collection used to reach them and a preference for qualitative research methods. According to the ascending classification, the prevailing technique is the interview (semi-structured and in-depth) followed by survey.Table 6 presents some typical text units of this class.
The academic journals associated with the context of Class 4 are Revue de Geographie Alpine, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Journal of Environment and Development, Development Southern Africa.
Source: own elaboration based on ALCESTE analysis report
6. RESULTS OF ARTICLES CATEGORIZATION
In addition to the automatic analysis, categorization of the main information contained in the articles allows several characteristics to be highlighted and the theoretical perspectives applied in studies to be identified. Considering the set of 304 articles, the highest incidence of publications (32%) involving tourism governance occur between 2013 and 2015. The Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Sustainability (Switzerland) and Tourism Management are the academic journals that have the largest number of articles, representing 14.5%, 11.2% and 8.2% respectively. Together, the five journals with the highest number of publications (The Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Sustainability (Switzerland), Tourism Management, Tourism Geographies and Annals of Tourism Research) encompass 42,76% of the articles analysed. The analysed corpus comes from 108 different journals.
According to the article metrics provided by Scopus, the most often cited article (within this database) is authored byHall (2011a), followed byBeaumont and Dredge (2010).Table 7 shows the five most cited articles considering the period covered by the analysis (1999-2020) and excluding self-citations.
Source: own elaboration based on Scopus report
The most common research strategy observed is the case study. According toYin (2010), the case study research can include both single-case and multiple-case studies. Although some areas “have used terms as a comparative case method as a distinguishing feature of multiple case studies”, single case studies and multiple cases are two variants of the case study projects” (Yin 2010, 33). In the set of articles examined, 79% adopted the case study research strategy, with a predominance of single cases. The multiple-cases studies categorized involving more than one locality, institution, or organization, and comparative cases (24.3% of study case set) are shown separately inTable 8.
Source: own elaboration
The examination reaffirmed the emphasis of discussion on environmental issues, the impacts caused by tourism development, and on social implications, likewise community participation in decision-making and management processes, as already observed in the previous analysis (ALCESTE). This set of articles is focused on environmental sensitive territories, as natural protected areas, heritage sites and islands.Table 9 identifies and relates the articles’ authorship and type of territory.
Source: own elaboration
Considering the territorial configuration as being constituted by a set of natural systems and human impositions (Santos 2006), and therefore, variable as to its definition and changing over time, the scope of the studies was thus divided into six levels or scales (Table 10). The local level considered in this research refers to a locality (i.e. city, village) or a subspace that involves some form of delimitation or territorial cut, as considered byAlbagli (2004).
Source: own elaboration
The regional refers to a scale between the national and the local. The term region is generally understood as a broader and more internally diverse unit than a given area or locality and is traditionally used by geographers to designate a medium or intermediate-scale space entity (Albagli 2004, 49).
Therefore, when a study refers to sub-region governance, when two or more localities that form a touristic area together and are inserted within a region, for example, this scale was considered as sub-regional. Because of the transformations of geographical spaces due to political and economic reorganizations, the supranational level was also included inTable 10. This level refers to two studies focused on supranational decisions about tourism, one related to the evolution and structure of the European Union (EU) tourism policy and another to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Most of the 177 empirical studies on tourism governance are focused on the local level (38.3%), followed by the regional (31.6%) and national (20.9%). The local and regional levels comprise part of the multiple case studies. Most of the empirical studies on tourism governance that refer to the local scale (68 publications), address topics related to resource management and the performance of institutional bodies on promotion.
There are few studies that review national policies and plans or analyse their objectives and results or impacts, although policies and plans are frequently mentioned in studies focused on the local level. In this context,Estol and Font (2016) authored the only study about the evolution and structure of the European Union tourism policy.
There is a recent growth of studies on a regional scale – as the internal spatial scale of countries – after 2011, which indicates a change from what was observed byZahra (2011). In the analysed set, most articles focused on the regional level were published between 2011 and 2016. A slight growth can be seen in the years 2019 and 2020.
Several theories and perspectives with different origins can be identified in 127 articles (Table 11).
Source: own elaboration
In this set, studies that address issues related to power stand out (16.5%), notably focusing on Asian and African countries, and the central role of governments in processes such as policymaking and resources management. Networks are the second evident perspective (11.8%), focusing on tourism stakeholders. The third perspective to be highlighted refers to partnerships, usually involving public and private actors. Social capital theory, collaboration, common pool resource, corporate governance and leadership perspectives are less discussed when referring to the relationship between the same actors.
Two general thematic focuses stand out in studies that address sustainable tourism. The first one refers to the forms of governance, considering the participation of non-public actors in the decision-making processes and in the management of touristic resources. The second one refers to forms of sustaining the activity and the environments where it occurs. Thus, sustainable tourism and practices are often highlighted in these studies (Table 12). Some researches address the issues involving sustainability and tourism in more detail: (1)Borges, Eusébio and Carvalho (2014) present a synthesis of the main methodologies to collect data and analyse governance within the context of tourism, tourism destinations and sustainable development, (2)Albrecht (2013) offers an examination of perspectives on networks in sustainable tourism, and (3)Volgger and Pechlaner (2015), provide an overview of the state of the art in research on tourism networks.
Considering the set of articles examined, two important structures for the promotion of tourist destinations receive less attention in tourism governance research: (1) Destination Management Organizations – DMO (Pechlaner, Volgger and Herntrei 2012;Pechlaner and Volgger 2013;Coles, Dinan and Hutchison 2014;Slocum and Everett 2014;Volgger and Pechlaner 2014;Hristov and Zehrer 2019;Foris et al. 2020), and (2) Regional Tourism Organizations – RTO (Garnes and Grønhaug 2011;Zahra 2011;Valente, Dredge, and Lohmann 2014, 2015;Farmaki 2015;Conceição, Dos Anjos and dos Anjos 2019).
7. DISCUSSION
The major concerns pointed out in the analysis of studies on tourism governance – sustainability, tourism development and management, and modes of governance – focus on the consideration of the participation of non-public actors in processes and actions inherent to government structures.
Historically, the interest in discussing themes such as networks and community-based development emerged at the end of the 1980s, reflecting a clear manifestation against authority hierarchy (Mayntz 2003). Networks emerged in political sectors as a form of achieving effectiveness through cooperation and resolving the natural divergence of varied interests (Mayntz 2000). At that time, topics such as bottom-up planning, community participation and co-management began to be discussed more often. However, considering the data examined, tourism studies emphasized these topics almost a decade later, actually in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when sustainability-related issues attracted more attention around the world.
As affirmed byHall (2011a, 649) “at the same time that sustainable tourism has grown as an area of academic interest, the term has been increasingly adopted into tourism policymaking by both the public and private sectors at all levels of governance”. Given the fast environmental changes and the impacts caused by tourism activities, sustainable tourism development has become a significant political issue and therefore a target of the policymaking process (Hall 2011b).
Observing data, the research concerned with sustainability presents a wide variety of situations in geographically, economically, politically, and socially diverse environments, confirming that analysing the various issues involved in tourism governance is a complex task.
As cited before, a frequent concern is the participation of non-public actors in the decision-making process, and it is an issue already highlighted in the oldest publication analysed. Authored byTrousdale (1999), a study undertaken on the Island of Boracay (Philippines) draws attention to sustainable tourism development and criticizes the planning process, evidencing the need to improve planning – through a broad systematic assessment and a clear delineation of government roles at each level of action – and promote community participation to mitigate adverse effects of tourism development and maximize the benefits.
Bruyn and Alonso (2012, 232) consider that governance gives meaning to the collectivity in policymaking processes and management of public goods. They demonstrate the same concerns asTrousdale (1999), affirming that “governance implies participation, setting up a system that will allow and foster involvement and commitment of all relevant stakeholders to achieve results”. In this sense,Bruyn and Alonso (2012) propose a tourism governance analysis model combining different actors or partners (tourism authority, other government authorities, private sector representatives and civil society representatives) at each level of government (national, regional and local), and pointed out the institutional and operational structures responsible for maintaining the coordination and monitoring of the system.
Tailored and effective governance seems to be a key requirement for implementing sustainable tourism as “it can enhance democratic processes, provide direction and offer the means to make practical progress” (Bramwell and Lane 2011, 1). It is important to take into consideration that, according to the type and structure of government and the stage of tourism development, policies can include a set of strategies, regulations and guidelines which will serve for daily decisions and activities at a destination for both government and private sectors (McLeod and Airey 2007). However, the coordination around tourism activities within heterogeneous groups of stakeholders is still a challenge to the tourism policy (Henriksen and Halkier 2009). As observed byYüksel, Bramwell and Yüksel (2005) andCruz, Albrecht and Briones (2016), the state authority concentration on decision-making and the bureaucracies can be the major obstacles to achieve a more effective governance, especially in developing countries, where decision-making tends to be highly centralized.
Various articles associate community participation in planning and destination management with the principle of sustainability (e.g.Ioppolo, Saija and Salomone 2013;Ruhanen 2013;Zarokosta and Koutsouris 2014;Silva 2015). However, this participation seems to be more of an ideal than a reality (e.g.Reis and Hayward 2013;Gustavsson et al. 2014;Carter et al. 2015;Palmer and Chuamuangphan 2018;Bichler and Lösch, 2019;Kismartini and Pujiyono 2020). There are few studies that point out the residents’ involvement in an effective way; generally, they are related to the attractions management located in protected areas (Sowers 2007;Hueneke and Baker 2009;Atmodjo, Lamers and Mol 2017).
From the governance perspective, network and territory are closely connected (Goodwin 2013) and there are, in fact, many studies that adopt the network approach (e.g.Beaumont and Dredge 2010;Farmaki 2015;Volgger and Pechlaner 2015;Petridou, Olausson, and Ioannides 2019), but few address the question of territoriality (i.e.Farrelly 2011;McGehee, Knollenberg and Komorowski 2015;Schroeder 2015;Ying, Jiang and Zhou 2015), i.e., how territorial dynamics are expressed when facing changes and delimited power relations, and their articulation at various scales (Albagli 2004, 7). Despite the evident interest in study networks and their governance, there is little knowledge about network arrangements effectiveness and no evidence that they do in fact promote a better governance (Beaumont and Dredge 2010;Volgger and Pechlaner 2015), but the research on destination governance (local and regional) is valuable to examine the numerous existing networks and partnerships (Pechlaner, Volgger and Herntrei 2012). However, the changes that have occurred recently and the way DMOs deal with crises will undoubtedly change the way how to deal with destination management and the sustainability of tourism (Rogerson and Rogerson 2020;Miedes-Ugarte et al. 2020).
This study has some limitations. First, it is limited to one database. Second, the limited access to the full content of some articles has reduced the corpus to the manual analysis. Third, the choice of the search terms limited the analysis of other articles that did not consider governance and tourism as keywords.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this literature review was to examine the governance approach in tourism studies, highlighting their main characteristics and focus. Although limited by a set of 304 articles listed in SCOPUS database, it has revealed the various approaches taken by the authors and the evident interest in political and economic issues. It emphasizes relationship patterns of (and between) public and non-public actors as well their implications, indicating a wide range of factors that interfere in the management of tourism at different levels of government action. It also highlighted the asymmetries of power and their consequences for places. The complexity involved in governance shows that tourism planning and practices resulted in various paths of success or failure in terms of destinations, generating differing social, economic, and political effects and impacts.
The concerns evidenced in this literature review provide reflections on the potentially influential mechanisms of decisions and actions about tourism development and management. However, the knowledge generated as contextually typifying patterns of interaction and governing, cannot be perceived as a set capable of evaluating or understanding a complex and dynamic phenomenon such as governance. The different approaches of various disciplines in combination with the theory of governance – originally conceived in the field of political science– are attempts to give meaning to events in certain contexts and moments. Such approaches, considering the analysed set, cannot be understood as an evolution of theory, but as new theories, new ways of thinking about governance to explain the modes and practices of various actors other than the public ones in decision-making processes.
The diversity of scientific research on tourism governance shows us that governance is a relevant issue for the continuity of destinations as such. Even if the success or failure of a destination is not only related to governance, it has a fundamental role in leading to one or another path. However, the studies analysed lead us to believe that the expected forms of integration of interests, consensus, commitment, cooperation, and collaboration to better think on the present and the future are not sustainable in the medium and long term, constant for a long time – and do not result in the expected sustainable development of places and societies. One limitation of the manuscript is the use of ‘tourism’ and ‘governance’ as keywords, since it could miss some articles concerned with tourism governance that do not use these specific words.
Based on the results, it is possible to indicate that future research on destination governance – at local level – should consider longitudinal analysis to perceive the dynamics of governance and its effects over the destination evolution, with special attention to the early stages of development when the supply system is still in an initial phase. Also, the scarcity of studies at the supra-municipal level in the analysed set makes us believe that future studies should analyse the performance of government arrangements –involving some municipalities that end up acting in some way on tourism management– at this level. This indication is due to the knowledge that the nature of the tourism system is not limited to the administrative borders or the local-regional level of government. Therefore, it is important to comprehend the contributions and results of establishing strategies, designing, and implementing policies through supra-municipal governance arrangements.