Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to explore some opportunities and constraints for tourism to contribute to rural development. The thesis explores several different stakeholders’ views, which are discussed in relation to each other. The informants represent companies, associations and authorities. Central concepts are tourism, the tourism paradox, entrepreneurship, embeddedness and the tourist gaze. These are used to interpret the empirical data on factors affecting tourism development in rural areas and different stakeholders’ role.
The results show that factors influencing entrepreneurial activity within the tourism sector include infrastructure and communications, support from government and authorities, and collaboration with other stakeholders. The stakeholders have separate incentives in their role of tourism development but share the aim of achieving tourism development without negative influence on society or environment. Challenges in rural tourism include the ability to charge for tourism services, since accessibility to nature is free by the right of public access, and to discover the possible values in one’s vicinity since this is influenced by the resident’s view of themselves.