Drawing on primary data from a consumer survey (N = 2000), this study demonstrates a clear growth potential in rural tourism in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which is, however, hampered by innovation gaps. At the conceptual level, the study offers a model that identifies the following five innovation gaps in Scandinavian rural tourism: (1) the portfolio gap, (2) the policy departmentalization gap, (3) the knowledge gap, (4) the change motivation gap, and (5) the resource interpretation gap. At the empirical level, the study shows that rural tourism has its basis in a dichotomy between authenticity and modernization. New and prospective customer groups, particularly from Germany, demand more diversified and higher quality rural tourism products than current groups, for example, in relation to outdoor opportunities, leisure festivals, and cultural activities. With rural assets, it is possible to expand the portfolio without compromising the rural image. Rural tourism enterprises and destinations remain slow movers in terms of innovation endeavours, and the study indicates that the discrepancies between potential customers’ service expectations and their spending patterns can partially explain this phenomenon. The merit of the innovation gap model is that this model identifies potential rebalancing actions at both enterprise and destination levels.

Financial access is considered a crucial element of entrepreneurship. Much of the literature focuses on how individual actors demand or supply finance, but rarely within the context of systemic entrepreneurship. The current entrepreneurial finance literature is fragmented and rooted in various traditions. However, the entrepreneur’s perceived role in aggregated wealth creation is currently being strengthened, most recently by the emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective. This calls for exploring the role of finance in systemic entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems. By conducting a systematic literature review of financial determinants, sources and effects, the study synthesizes debates across the different research fields, i.e. finance, entrepreneurship and regional development. As the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept is considered a pre-paradigmatic approach, the paper argues that the role of finance depends on how we regard and define ecosystems. The state of knowledge is also underdeveloped due to the obstacles of acquiring longitudinal data. Such issues keep us from achieving a better evolutionary and processual understanding of the financial dynamics in ecosystems and, therefore, presents a promising avenue for future research.

Purpose: This study highlights areas of key importance for building event resilience and provides best-practice industry examples that foster innovative, adaptable and transformative event environments, which are areas of high academic and managerial relevance in times of uncertainty.Design/methodology/approach: The study employs a multicase study research design that draws on interviews with the leaders of four event organizations in Denmark and Norway: (1) the Steinkjer Festival, (2) Run Alone Denmark, (3) FC Midtjylland and (4) the Bergen International Festival.Findings: The events demonstrated the critical necessity of understanding innovation and its contribution to resilience in the event sector, particularly in times of uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. These organizations achieved success by continuously fostering innovative environments before COVID-19 by being value-driven and customer-centric organizations. Digital technologies were not used as makeshift solutions but rather to enhance event attendees' experiential platforms and expand each event's business potential.Practical implications: The paper answers the call for event and festival research during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore the importance of understanding failure, crisis, innovation and recovery.Originality/value: The paper's contributions to event management research are (1) adding to the ongoing discussion about building a resilient event sector in times of uncertainty, (2) screening how event organizers achieve innovation in their organizations and (3) providing insights on future requirements for events in a post-COVID world.

The assumption that events can have positive economic impacts has increased interest in their hosting by many destinations worldwide. Although attendees are a constitutive part of events, scarce research has empirically analyzed their behavior from an economic standpoint. In particular, further exploratory research is required on (1) how much money event attendees spend at events, and (2) the extent to which event attendee expenditures positively affect the host region. A better understanding of these two aspects is crucial for any kind of economic impact assessment. This study examines three World Cup ski-jumping events in Norway during the winter of 2012–2013. Altogether, 870 spectators were interviewed at the venues in Vikersund, Trondheim, and Oslo. Prior research has estimated that the proportion of spectators contributing to a positive economic impact is between 10% and 60%. The current study shows that the share of this spectator group at the World Cup ski-jumping events in Norway lies in the lower part of the range. Furthermore, the study shows that though the total number of spectators was significant (137,000), the primary economic impact on the host region was modest, amounting to less than NOK 9 million.

This paper aims to advance the understanding of the experience-satisfaction relationship and the impact of the event context on such a relationship. In particular, there is an interplay between four dimensions of experience (i.e. affective, cognitive, physical, and novel) and satisfaction. The current study builds upon a primary dataset consisting of 1599 responses obtained from visitors attending two leisure activities, namely, a sport event and a music festival in Norway. The results show that the four experience dimensions’ direct effects on satisfaction differ between the two types of activities. The impact of affective engagement on satisfaction is significantly higher at the music festival than at the sport event, and the impact of cognitive engagement on satisfaction is significant at the sport event but not at the music festival. This paper highlights the importance of carefully managing events and festival engagement profiles to improve visitor satisfaction. Furthermore, it contributes to the literature by showing that the values assigned by respondents to cognitive, physical, and novel engagement differ significantly between sport events and music festivals and are contextually dependent.