Local Knowledge Management and Innovation Spillover: Exploring Tourism Entrepreneurship Potential

1. Introduction

Research in tourism has paid little attention to tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs (TLEs) (Zhang, Xiao, & Rao, 2015). However, for several reasons these entrepreneurs require more attention. First, considering that small and medium-sized enterprises represent the majority of tourist businesses, a very significant part of these small scale businesses are run by TLEs (Cooper, 2015). Second, TLEs businesses are more sustainable businesses when compared with large firms (Shrivastava & Kennelly, 2013; Pereira et al., 2021a; Pereira et al., 2021b). Third, these businesses play an important role on the destination innovation (Bosworth & Farrell, 2011; Dias, González‐Rodríguez & Patuleia, 2021a). Despite this importance, little is known about the antecedents of this innovative capacity and how it is spread within the destination to generate the spillover effect (Hoarau, 2014).

Furthermore, local knowledge plays an important role on TLEs innovation and competitiveness because it is tacit and difficult to imitate (Shrivastava & Kennelly, 2013; Dias et al., 2020b), and a basis for TLEs differentiation (Yachin, 2019). As such, the way local knowledge is acquired and assimilated and transformed into innovation is equally important to explore, and extend existing knowledge: pertaining to TLEs business models. Although the importance of the place in the experiences offered by entrepreneurs has already been identified (Yachin, 2019; Srivastava, 2021), its implications of place attachment on innovation are not totally identified. On the other hand, although Zhang et al. (2015) have analysed the innovation spillover effect in the context of TLEs, the antecedents of this spillover are still to be explored, since the recognition of these factors represents an important knowledge for the tourism destinations' competitiveness. As such, the main objectives of this study are threefold. First, this study aims to analyze the contribution of knowledge management to the innovation capacity of the TLEs and to the innovation spillover effect. Second, the study aims at understanding the influence of TLEs place attachment on the innovation capacity. This article explores an important topic for the tourism destinations' competitiveness from the perspective of lifestyle entrepreneurs. Despite its importance (in number, innovation and sustainability), this remains an under-explored topic. Third, this article deals with tacit local knowledge, an insufficiently developed topic (Zhang et al., 2015).

In order to bridge the abovementioned gaps in the tourism literature, this present study aims to explore the antecedents of entrepreneurial innovation and innovation spillover by perceiving the dynamics of knowledge management and place attachment. This research employs a quantitative approach analyzing the relationships between knowledge acquisition and place attachment in entrepreneurial innovation and innovation spillover, as well as the mediating role of community-centered strategies and knowledge assimilation in the same relations (Dias, González-Rodríguez & Patuleia, 2020). As this subject is yet under-explored in the literature, the determination of these relationships constitutes important contributions of this study.

This study is divided into four more sections. The second section includes the literature review, revealing the essential concepts to retain for the understanding of the study, followed by previously studied observations on the subject and finally the conceptual model chosen for its demonstration. The third section is focused on the methodology, thus indicating in a simple way which methodology was used in this study. The fourth is based on statistical analysis and discussion of the results obtained through it. Finally, an overall reflection of the conclusions, and practical implications are presented, as well suggestions for future research.