Application of Natural-Resource-Based View to Nature-Based Tourism Destinations

The present study investigates the impact of natural environments on tourism destinations in a holistic approach. Specifically, the impact of accessibility to beaches and environmental quality aspects (temperature, visibility, air quality, and water quality) on tourism businesses can be accessed based on a natural-resource-based view. Dynamic panel estimation is employed to analyze the financial performance of U.S. coastal hotels between 2008 and 2017. By employing the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) analysis, this aims to estimate coefficients consistently and impartially, thereby addressing endogeneity issues. According to findings of the present study, as hotels are close to beaches, they earn higher revenues and higher revenue per-available-room. Also, all four environmental factors are significant on coastal hotels’ financial performance. These findings underscore the importance of beach and environmental factors as location-specific tourism resources that provide a competitive advantage and demonstrate the application of natural-resource-based view to tourism destinations.