This paper contributes to the tourism innovation literature by discussing the role of values and concern as drivers of innovation and sources of differentiation in tourism. A qualitative study of four whale-watching companies in Iceland and Norway shows that businesses in the same industry can differentiate through innovation based on their values and concerns. We have operationalized concern as the enactment of values and found four main foci of concern, as follows: customer, environment, society and business. Each focal point is further broken down into various sub-categories. These concerns result in differing innovation priorities and firm practices in the same industry. Businesses develop innovation profiles that distinguish them from competitors and that can attract like-minded stakeholders for cooperation. The implications for theory and practice are suggested.

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The planet is facing social-environmental crises that include climate change, biodiversity loss, mass extinctions, and unsustainable consumption and production. These issues are rooted in hegemonic patriarchy and built on practices of continued inequity. Wildlife tourism could address some of these issues, but instead it is exacerbated by social-ecological challenges and various levels of hierarchical injustices. The SDGs were intended to facilitate solutions to these global problems. Yet, they do not address the fundamental underpinnings of the anthropocentric injustices exacerbating these systemic challenges, in part because they were generated via the hegemonic processes that allow for these injustices to continue. Using a transdisciplinary intersectional ecofeminist approach to analyze the SDGs, we propose a theory that adopts a posthuman ethic—Wildlife Equity as a foundation to guide principles and apply to policies that rigorously illuminate the continued injustices that are driving the decline of livelihoods for all sentient beings on Earth.

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