Turismo de Base Comunitária como Inovação Social: congruência entre os constructos

Abstract

Community-based tourism (CBT) has been promulgated as a “new” form of tourism that is defined as the opposite to mass tourism. It is also considered as an initiative that has a potential for social transformation and sustainable local development. CBT initiatives are characterized by the pursuit of quality of life for the actors involved, the search for social and/or environmental gains at the local level, and the development of initiatives that favor the collective. In this perspective, CBT seems to be aligned with the postulates of Social Innovation (SI). However, in academic circles, the understanding of CBT as a mechanism of social transformation and as a form of social innovation is difficult to comprehend due to an absence of a theoretical framework. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyze the congruence between the concepts of CBT and IS based on the analysis of the model of social innovation proposed by Tardif and Harrison (2005). The findings confirm that the communitybased tourism can be considered a social innovation since it contemplates the various categories of social innovation as stated by network of congruences of the constructs of the concepts deduced from the analysis.