Cultivating cannabis agritourism: Integrating service-dominant logic in Northern California’s Emerald Triangle

Cannabis legalization presents an unexplored context to address tour guides as strategic actors in the relationship between agriculture and tourism. In California, landmark Proposition 64 (2016), which legalized recreational cannabis, opens up opportunities for agritourism in rural areas, establishing the state as a unique hub for commercial cannabis farm tours. The purpose of this paper is to employ Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) as a framework for conceptualizing cannabis agritourism as a dynamic 'service ecosystem'. Evidence from a case study carried out in the Emerald Triangle demonstrates how the strategic value-creating activities of agritourism entities, including the tour guide, catalyze value co-creation in B2C and B2B domains. A supply-side perspective highlights the tour guide as a mechanism to resolve the persistent challenge of integrating agriculture and tourism. By providing a potential solution to facilitate the coexistence of agricultural production with customer-oriented services, tour guides also strengthen the cannabis supply chain more broadly. • Cannabis tourism reveals untapped service potential via innovative agritourism. • Farm assets create immersive, co-created tourism experiences. • Tour guides serve as strategic connectors bridging production, retail, and experiential services. • SDL reframes value creation by merging service logic with supply chains. • Novel methods reveal the dynamic impact of tour guides on sustainable rural tourism.