Collaboration as a key for responsibility in the nature tourism network : Research in the national parks and protected areas on the coast of Finland

Abstract: There is no sustainability without responsibility. This research considers the connection between collaboration and responsibility. Responsible tourism has been discussed together with sustainable tourism, but who is responsible for increasing sustainability have not been researched widely. The research focus is on the nature tourism network. The tourism network consists of multiple public and private stakeholders with different agreements. All the stakeholders have their agendas, but sustainability can be seen as a common goal for each stakeholder in the nature tourism network. The question is how to implement more sustainability within tourism stakeholders and how much public-private partnerships affect the responsibility of sustainability. The qualitative research was done by mixed methods. The survey for SMEs and semi-structured interviews for SMEs and DMOs. The research area in coastal Finland includes multiple nature destinations which are owned by the state. In the previous research, it was stated that a sustainable tourism destination needs collaboration. In this research was found that SMEs cannot work without cooperation, especially in nature-based tourism destinations. The purpose of this paper was to see how the quality of collaboration between the stakeholders influences taking responsibility for sustainability actions. The lack of communication and cooperation between the public-private sector may lead to misunderstandings in sustainable tourism cooperation. Miscommunication of the delegation for the responsibilities affects the success of the sustainability implementations. This research highlights the importance of efficient stakeholder management and future research on sharing responsibility for achieving sustainability in the tourism sector.