Sustainability Practices at Hotels and BnB Establishments …
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vation or unwillingness, to passive compliance, to active personal commitment. With
increasing internalization (and its associated sense of personal commitment) come
greater persistence, more positive self-perceptions, and better quality of engagement.
A more autonomous, or self-determined, form of extrinsic motivation is regulation
through identification. Here, the person has identified with the personal importance
of a behaviour and has thus accepted its regulation as his or her own. Internalization
and integration are the processes through which extrinsically motivated behaviours
become more self-determined. Ryan and Deci (2000) points out that the facilitation
of more self-determined behaviour requires conditions that allow satisfaction of these
three basic human needs: to feel connected, effective, and agentic as one is exposed
to new ideas and exercises new skills (Ryan and Deci 2000).
6 Lifestyle Entrepreneurs
There is a new style of entrepreneurship emerging in the tourism sector that aims
to develop products that brings together the pillars of sustainability (social/cultural,
environmental, and economic), and in so doing can create a better society. This
conceptual and practical framework is well encompassed in the concept of sustainable
livelihood, as introduced by Scoones (1998: 5): “the capabilities, assets (including
both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A
livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks,
maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, while not undermining the natural
resource base”. Lifestyle entrepreneurs are part of this new trend.
Peer-to-peer online platforms such as Airbnb have partly englobed niche forms
of tourism such as cultural and natural tourism. Airbnb, in fact, is not just an urban
platform for the tourist accommodation sector but has also become economically
and socially relevant in rural environments. Martin’s research (2016: 154) has shown
that the sharing economy in the form of Airbnb accommodations “identifies the environmental and social impacts of unsustainable consumer behaviour within capitalist
economies as the problem to be addressed. Hence, the sharing economy is heralded
as a new and sustainable form of consumption based on individuals accessing rather
owning resources.” Interestingly, his research also shows that the same actors within
the sharing economy of Airbnb also acknowledge that many of its current forms
(Airbnb has developed into a corporate co-option of the sharing economy) tend to
reinforce the neoliberal economic paradigm, making economic, social, and environmental sustainability harder to achieve. In the past thirty years there has been a
growing recognition of the importance of small-scale and lifestyle entrepreneurship
in the tourism industry (Shaw 2004), but research on BnBs, despite the recent global
growth of BnB establishments in developing and developed countries due to Airbnb
(Guttentag 2015; Visser et al. 2017), has not developed accordingly.
Tourism entrepreneurship and lifestyle entrepreneurs such as BnB owners is still
quite a neglected area of research (Ioannides and Petersen 2003; Thomas 2004; Li
2008; Ateljevic and Page 2009; Ateljevic and Doorne 2000; Burns 2001). There
339
vation or unwillingness, to passive compliance, to active personal commitment. With
increasing internalization (and its associated sense of personal commitment) come
greater persistence, more positive self-perceptions, and better quality of engagement.
A more autonomous, or self-determined, form of extrinsic motivation is regulation
through identification. Here, the person has identified with the personal importance
of a behaviour and has thus accepted its regulation as his or her own. Internalization
and integration are the processes through which extrinsically motivated behaviours
become more self-determined. Ryan and Deci (2000) points out that the facilitation
of more self-determined behaviour requires conditions that allow satisfaction of these
three basic human needs: to feel connected, effective, and agentic as one is exposed
to new ideas and exercises new skills (Ryan and Deci 2000).
6 Lifestyle Entrepreneurs
There is a new style of entrepreneurship emerging in the tourism sector that aims
to develop products that brings together the pillars of sustainability (social/cultural,
environmental, and economic), and in so doing can create a better society. This
conceptual and practical framework is well encompassed in the concept of sustainable
livelihood, as introduced by Scoones (1998: 5): “the capabilities, assets (including
both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A
livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks,
maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, while not undermining the natural
resource base”. Lifestyle entrepreneurs are part of this new trend.
Peer-to-peer online platforms such as Airbnb have partly englobed niche forms
of tourism such as cultural and natural tourism. Airbnb, in fact, is not just an urban
platform for the tourist accommodation sector but has also become economically
and socially relevant in rural environments. Martin’s research (2016: 154) has shown
that the sharing economy in the form of Airbnb accommodations “identifies the environmental and social impacts of unsustainable consumer behaviour within capitalist
economies as the problem to be addressed. Hence, the sharing economy is heralded
as a new and sustainable form of consumption based on individuals accessing rather
owning resources.” Interestingly, his research also shows that the same actors within
the sharing economy of Airbnb also acknowledge that many of its current forms
(Airbnb has developed into a corporate co-option of the sharing economy) tend to
reinforce the neoliberal economic paradigm, making economic, social, and environmental sustainability harder to achieve. In the past thirty years there has been a
growing recognition of the importance of small-scale and lifestyle entrepreneurship
in the tourism industry (Shaw 2004), but research on BnBs, despite the recent global
growth of BnB establishments in developing and developed countries due to Airbnb
(Guttentag 2015; Visser et al. 2017), has not developed accordingly.
Tourism entrepreneurship and lifestyle entrepreneurs such as BnB owners is still
quite a neglected area of research (Ioannides and Petersen 2003; Thomas 2004; Li
2008; Ateljevic and Page 2009; Ateljevic and Doorne 2000; Burns 2001). There