Investigating the strategic role of business associations in willingness toward tourism coopetition

This article examines the strategic role of business associations in the willingness toward coopetition, including variables of the three dimensions of the sectorial tourism context: firm, inter-firm, and industry levels. Data were collected through questionnaires with tourism business managers. The methodological design combined three techniques: Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and Multi-Group Analysis (MGA). Study results suggest that industry-level context has more influence on tourism associationism than the context of the firm and inter-firm levels. That means market commonalities have more impact than interdependency or long-term orientation toward coopetition willingness. Findings suggest that tourism destinations with high market commonality are more likely to have strong business associations and can consolidate coopetition networks, while tourism destinations with low market commonalities will probably have weaker business associations, and the coopetition networks will depend on the long-term vision of firms. Associationism has a strategic role in tourism destinations as it, directly and indirectly, affects willingness toward coopetition. Market commonality, long-term view and associationism are sufficient and necessary conditions for coopetition at the tourism destination independent from dependency degree among firms.