Eco-innovation antecedents in cultural tourism clusters: External relationships and explorative knowledge

This paper analyses the mediating role played by knowledge strategy in the relationship between social capital and eco-innovation in cultural tourism clusters. Specifically, we will focus on bridging capital, based on networks made up of structural holes, as a fundamental antecedent of eco-innovation by means of explorative knowledge. The empirical study was performed on a sample of tourism firms located in Spain’s World Heritage Cities. The results reveal that knowledge exploration strategy is a key driving force through which firms located in cultural tourism clusters can take advantage of the potential of bridging capital in order to develop eco-innovations.