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to show the contemporary state of the system at the time of the interview. Four main steps were
used as guidelines to the method:
1)
2)
3)
4)
Explaining the basics of CLDs with help of an example diagram that does not relate to
the aim of the interview.
Clarifying the goal of the diagram: Does local tourism practice make the community sustainable?
The interviewee starts defining variables with help of questions, e.g. ‘what is important
to know about the context of this system?’
The interviewee defines the relationships between the variables with help of questions,
e.g. ‘which strategies are the most relevant to be able to meet these challenges?’
Fieldwork was done in Gunnarsbyn March 2nd – 15th, 2011. The participants represented all tourist
hosts in Gunnarsbyn (Table 1). They were chosen by purposive strategy, already established
connections with people that could give the greatest possible insight into the topic in this area
(Esterberg, 2001). This may be seen as a challenge to the role of a neutral researcher and creates a
risk for bias. On the other hand the researcher did not have the possibility of choosing participants
by any other methods since these individuals are the only tourist hosts in their community. The
interviews were conducted in Swedish and translated in the transcribing process. The quotes
provided in the following chapters are therefore a word for word translation. The translation and
transcription was done by the author. The presented quotes were sent to the participants to be
confirmed before publishing. Additional ethical considerations that need to be addressed are those
regarding mutual reward of participation to both the researcher and the participants. The interview
questions were designed in a manner that helped the participants reflect on their own situation and
the participants commented that the outcomes of the participatory system analysis method provided
them with an overview of their situation. During follow-up communication one of the participants,
Tatiana, mentioned that she had used the results of the interview in her work in a municipal
networking project. The correct names of the participants are used in the results with their
permission.
Table 1: List of Participants
Participants
Description of business
Kurt Selberg