Culture-shaped Mental Models and the Governance of Innovation in Tourist Destinations – Comparative Evidence from Ecuador and Azerbaijan.

Abstract

Destinations in Developing Countries often display shortages when it comes to targeted and innovative knowledge toward relieving urgent social problems through creative tourism designed toward sustainable regional development. Tourism research generally finds the residential mindset to be an inhibiting factor in the roll-out of tourism. However, empirical evidence is scarce on the complex structure and (culture-shaped) development-processes of the mental models that form the basis of these mind-sets. This comparative study of case studies in both Azerbaijian and Ecuador offers a new qualitative approach, based on the GABEK semantic modelling technique, where latent manifest forms of collective mental models are uncovered together with the cultural “traces” left by their formation-process. As a main result, the intervention areas for targeted “cultural engineering” are identified from the extracted mental models that may serve as a starting point for a more systemic governance of innovation in DC-destinations.

Keywords

• Innovation
• Destination Governance
• Mental Models
• Role of Culture
• Ecuador
• Azerbaijan