The Blue Economy and Its Long-Term Competitive Advantage: An Examination of China's Coastal Tourism

Introduction

The phrase blue economy has become more commonly used in the past decades (Garland, Axon, Graziano, Morrissey, & Heidkamp, 2019). The ocean is a priceless heritage of human beings (Pardo, 1984). The amenity value of the ocean has traditionally been regarded as something outside of the economic scope. It was only since the post-productivist era that it has been commercialized and incorporated into the tourism industry (Garland et al., 2019). With China gradually losing its comparative advantage in manufacturing, many Chinese entrepreneurs have begun to divert their investments to ocean-based tourism with hopes of obtaining more sustainable growth.

Can the ocean tourism-based blue economy create sustainable profit as these Chinese entrepreneurs anticipate? Bari (2017) believes so because the blue economy differs from the traditional marine economy. It aims to achieve long-term sustainability by exploring the ocean in a more technology-based, connotative, and environmentally friendly way (Liu, 2014). In other words, if entrepreneurial innovations can make sure that the ocean’s amenity value always outweighs its productive value, and if a more economic profit can be created from conserving the ocean resources rather than destroying them, no one would have the incentive to deviate from the path of sustainable growth. As a result, the blue economy can be thought of as an economic development model that creates maximum profit from marine resources in the long run (Bari, 2017).

However, not everyone is this optimistic. Butler (1980) believes that even if the coastal natural resources could be sustainable, the tourism industry is unable to. This is because the tourism industry is not only rooted in the natural coastal heritage but, more importantly, is also rooted in the social heritage of these coasts. The essence of tourism services is not selling the ocean’s natural amenities but selling the “rural idyll” coastal lifestyle to city dwellers. From this perspective, “the tourism destination areas carry with them the potential seeds of their own destruction, as they allow themselves to become more commercialized and lose their qualities which originally attracted tourists.” (Butler, 1980, p. 6).

There is an element of truth in both optimistic and pessimistic views. Whether the optimistic or pessimistic results occur largely depends on which aspects of the socio-natural amenity of the ocean is commercialized to serve different type of tourists by providing certain recreational services. As a result, the following three components of the issue are of great importance (Figure 1):

• 1.

  The characteristics of the stakeholders, including both the tourists and the local residents

• 2.

  The characteristics of the coastal resources

• 3.

  The characteristics of the tourism services provided

The objective of this chapter is to use the quality management’s lens to explore the possibility of maintaining long-term competitive advantages in China’s coastal tourism industry. This chapter is organized as follows: first, the literature review synthesizes current literature regarding the aforementioned aspects. Second, this chapter describes the objectives and methodology applied in empirical research. Third, it summarizes the results and consequently draws conclusions and identifies future topics of research.

Figure 1.

Three aspects of characteristics associated with the success of the blue economy