Factors Influencing the Data Sharing Practices of European Tourism Stakeholders: Considerations for a Sustainable Common European Tourism Data Space

Recognizing the critical importance of data and its vital role in advancing the tourism industry, the European Union has begun to invest significantly in the creation of a common European Tourism Data Space (ETDS), an infrastructure to facilitate the sharing of data among tourism stakeholder organizations. In order to inform the design and governance strategies of the ETDS, a series of binary logistic regression models are evaluated to understand the key factors that influence tourism stakeholders decisions to share various categories of tourism ecosystem data (i.e., Human Capital, Natural Capital, Built Capital, Economic/Social Capital, Environmental Impact, Economic Impact, and Social Impact data) with third parties. Results based on online questionnaire data obtained from European tourism organizations (n=209) indicate that organizational resources, typology, motivations, and effort expectancy all play varying roles in tourism stakeholder data sharing practice. Importantly, this research provides preliminary empirical evidence to support the on-going development of the ETDS. Additionally, this investigation provides the opportunity to revisit the formative theories related to organizational data sharing and to re-evaluate them within the context of todays rapidly evolving tourism sector.