Rural tourism, resilience and sustainability transitions: The influence of tourists and tourism businesses on the production of space

The discourse about pathways of sustainability transitions is dominated by two opposing approaches. On the one hand, the transition studies literature follows a green growth efficiency-driven approach and argues that technological innovations will pave the way to more sustainable modes of living. On the other hand, postcapitalist scholars reject the efficiency paradigm and advocate an alternative, sufficiency-driven turn to sustainability characterized by degrowth-oriented downscaling and rightsizing.
This habilitation thesis contributes to this field of research and investigates how transitions towards more sustainable paths can be initiated and fostered. It focuses on tourism in rural regions that have been growing intensely in recent years and are characterized by mass tourism causing ecological and socio-cultural pressure. The thesis thus analyses what influence particularly tourists and tourism businesses have on the production of rural space regarding sustainability and rural tourism resilience and what role rural regions may generally play in sustainability transition processes.
The study recognizes that tourists and tourism businesses have a strong influence on the production of rural space while their sustainability orientations are heterogeneous. Rural tourism resilience and sustainable change are challenged by the growing popularity of rural tourism and the still dominantly growth-oriented rural tourism sector. Future rural development paths will be positioned within a spectrum of green growth-oriented mass tourism on the one hand and degrowth-oriented tourism on the other hand. With respect to shared responsibilities of urban and rural regions, this thesis pleads for financial compensation as a degrowth-oriented incentive for those rural tourism regions that are willing to follow a concept of reduced use of economic resources for the sake of greater ecological and socio-cultural goals that are of value for our societies on different geographical scales.