A socio-ecological perspective on drivers and inhibitors of purchasing NFTs in tourism

Abstract

While non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have triggered a new market for tourism, they have also encountered challenges and controversies. Drawing on the socio-ecological perspective, this study uses a qualitative approach to identify factors influencing consumer adoption of and resistance to NFTs in tourism. The findings reveal that consumer adoption and resistance are shaped by the effect of individual-level (e.g. innate innovativeness and routine seeking), micro-level, exo-level, and macro-level factors and the interactions across various systems. An important factor is scarcity value of NFTs in tourism which compensates for experiences that tourists cannot obtain in the offline tourism. Results provide a socio-ecological perspective for the understanding of innovation adoption and resistance in an emerging context and the promotion of NFTs in tourism.