Causes and effects of wine tourism development in wineries

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to propose that the institutional environment exerts pressure on the behavior of wineries toward wine tourism development (WTD) and the effect of this influence confers legitimacy to the business of wine tourism. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling through partial least squares was applied to estimate and validate a model using data from a quantitative survey in the universe of 62 wineries with a wine tourism component along the Alentejo Wine Route in Portugal. The proposed model is based on institutional theory through an inter-organizational perspective of wineries. Findings The results show that WTD coexists with a highly institutionalized environment, exerting distinctive mechanisms of external pressure together with the search for social legitimacy through actions and practices on the part of the involved wineries. However, the relationship between legitimacy and organizational performance in wineries with wine tourism is not validated. Research limitations/implications The specific sample of the Alentejo wine companies does not allow the results to be generalized. Future studies should replicate the proposed research model using other geographic areas. Practical implications The results are particularly interesting for managers of wineries and should be considered in the decision-making and strategic processes regarding wine tourism. Originality/value The use of institutional theory in the wine tourism context is novel and original. This study fills a research gap by conducting an empirical investigation of wine tourism based on institutional theory, which allows the identification of exogenous factors that can influence and impose restrictions on the organizational behavior of winery companies toward wine tourism.

Why organizations join voluntary sustainable tourism associations: Implications for membership and sustainability monitoring systems

“…The more institutionally organized a field is, the greater the effect that professional organizations, as purveyors of legitimacy, have over the industry. This can be carried out through the shaping of industry discourses (Greenwood et al, ; Scott, ), the ways in which firms interact with each other internationally (Buchanan & Marques, ; Chizema & Buck, ) and the ways in which firms are expected to develop internally (Lavandoski et al, ). Industry associations have been regarded as important institutional actors in industries, markets, and organizational fields (Barley, ; Rajwani, Lawton, & Phillips, ).…”

“…So how does this play out on‐the‐ground for organizations? Lavandoski et al () looked into how the institutional environment exerts pressure on wineries to develop wine tourism products in order to establish their legitimacy within the industry. They found that the prominent wine route organization and the national tourism entity were exerting normative and coercive pressures in the form of specific social requirements and legal regulations for the wine tourism products in wineries.…”

“…TLR was chosen as a case study for several reasons: First, because their membership base is worldwide, it was hoped that the insights obtained would be applicable to a wider range of associations than institutions that are entrenched in a single geopolitical region. Second, because TLR is a voluntary association, this provided a different angle than the majority of the literature surrounding other trade associations, where membership is typically involuntary either due to legal requirements or strong sociocultural norms (e.g., Buchanan & Marques, ; Lavandoski et al, ; Spillman, ). Lastly, because TLR was in the midst of updating their current monitoring system, this provided an opening for the researcher to engage with existing members and the association about the validity of different aspects of the monitoring system and supply feedback for shaping the new system.…”

“…Institutional theory provides a rich framework for understanding the roles and ways that organizations interact with each other within an institutional field (DiMaggio & Powell, ; Scott, ). Institutional theory has defined tourism institutional fields geographically (Lavandoski, Pinto, Silva, & Vargas‐Sanchez, ; Rawlence, ), and applied to study industry associations, where membership is a de facto requirement to trade (Font, Bonilla‐Priego, & Kantenbacher, ; Van Wijk, Stam, Elfring, Zietsma, & Den Hond, ), but not to genuinely voluntary membership associations. This paper fills this gap in the literature by examining a voluntary sustainable tourism association that supports members globally.…”

Guest editorial

“…Even if destinationoriented research remains a major theme in wine tourism, a notable change is the extent to which wine tourism and marketing-oriented studies have expanded from their historic base in Australia and New Zealand (Hall and Mitchell, 2008) to provide a much wider geographical coverage encompassing both New World (Bruwer and Joy, 2017;Singh and Hsiung, 2016) and Old World (Mauracher et al, 2016;Molina et al, 2015;Riguccio et al, 2017) wine-growing areas as well as emerging wine regions (Chong, 2017;Kerma and Ga cnik, 2015;Malm et al, 2013;Mazurkiewicz-Pizlo, 2016 Note: *Analysis conducted 27 August 2017 Table I. Journal articles on wine tourism in the Scopus database analysed by terms used in abstract, keywords and title Development concerns and issues remain a major theme in wine tourism research, with continuing interest in the life course of wine tourism at both operational and regional levels (Deery et al, 2012;Dodd and Beverland, 2016), although there remains a surprisingly limited amount of research on wine tourism business decision-making and strategy (Alonso et al, 2015;Lavandoski et al, 2016;Stavrinoudis et al, 2012) and issues of entrepreneurship (Dawson, Fountain and Cohen, 2011) and innovation (Alonso and Bressan, 2016;Baird and Hall, 2016). Growing attention is being given to the potential issues arising from increased tourism numbers in wine regions and the policy and planning issues that arise (Yelvington et al, 2014;Xu et al, 2016), although research on sustainability in a wine tourism context, as opposed to sustainable winegrowing, remains limited (Gázquez-Abad et al, 2015;Grimstad and Burgess, 2014).…”