Resource management regimes and innovation in peripheral nature-based tourism: The case of North Cape tourism and sea-fishing tourism

The study objective was to analyse how capitalized and non-capitalized resource rents act as mechanisms of innovation in nature-based tourism within a centre-periphery context dominated by distance, instability, and dependency. The authors studied 55 out of 64 businesses engaged in tourism in Nordkapp Municipality in Norway in the period 2002-2012. Data were collected from a survey, interviews, and empirical observations, and then analysed using both deductive and inductive methodological approaches. The main findings were that tourism in the Nordkapp Municipality had suffered from a lack of local innovation initiatives caused by the capitalized resource rent of tourism to North Cape and its leakage. Nevertheless, local tourism had increased partly because of the inclusion of new and more attractive products, due to the open-access, non-capitalized resource management in fishing tourism that operated simultaneously with the closed and capitalized context of North Cape tourism. The authors conclude that this open-access regime of fishing tourism stimulated innovation and further development of coastal tourism, and even affected traditional North Cape tourism. Non-capitalized resource rent had not leaked out because it had not been collected by external companies and because it had acted as an innovation mechanism on the periphery.