Blockchain and Digital Platforms for Transparency and Visitor Management in Sustainable Eco-Tourism

Blockchain and digital platforms are increasingly recognized as having the potential to increase transparency, accountability and trust in visitor management, and to shift from the traditional assumption that "digitalization" will become transformative rather than merely supportive. Applications of digital platforms are becoming more visible in the tourism sector globally, but limited evidence is known about the dynamic interaction between transparency mechanisms in blockchain-enabled systems. In this study, we examine how blockchain integration within digital visitor management platforms can help to understand transparency dynamics, along with the governance, trust and engagement dimensions of this digital transition. The interaction of governance variables through longitudinal platform and visitor data is also examined, and feedback effects help to improve the understanding of sustainable accountability mechanisms. We combine a quantitative time-series analysis of the current digital governance framework around eco-tourism platforms, in Uzbekistan. We support our analysis of major governance variables in transparency and visitor engagement with econometric modeling using Vector Auto Regression. The findings in the empirical analysis explain why transparency mechanisms in blockchain-enabled platforms moved beyond the linear adoption logic but also affected differently those stakeholder groups. Our results show that blockchain does not only give greater visibility to governance processes that are institutionally embedded and what can be done to stabilize this transition. We believe these findings have important implications in the governance of eco-tourism platforms, and the policy debate on transparency, trust, and sustainable visitor management.