Evolution of a community-based outdoor tourism and recreation resource into a public-private partnership, a social-ecological systems approach

This qualitative study employs a Social-Ecological Systems (SES) approach to explore and understand the evolution of a community-based outdoor tourism resource into a public-private partnership, using the Hump Ridge Track, New Zealand, as a case study. While community-based tourism initiatives face challenges such as profitability and governance, characteristics that enable successful development into a public-private partnership have not yet been identified. This study addresses this gap by examining factors and stakeholder dynamics that are crucial to this development. Data were collected using semi-structured expert interviews with purposely selected respondents and document analysis of relevant reports, media releases, and newspaper articles. Governance, visitor types, the transition process, nature-protection, ongoing issues, and community benefits emerged as themes. The SES framework proved useful in explaining how characteristics of actors, governance arrangements, and system conditions interact to generate observed outcomes, demonstrating how SES can be an effective research instrument in complex tourism governance settings.