This document examines the role of citizen engagement and hackathons in promoting sustainable tourism development. It analyzes the results of the SHARE Challenge hackathon in South Australia which received 88 ideas from citizens. Most ideas focused on utilizing underused assets and addressing unemployment. The hackathon engaged citizens from different sectors and inspired ideas in tourism, agriculture and other industries. The document concludes that incorporating citizen engagement tools like hackathons can promote entrepreneurship and bottom-up approaches to sustainable tourism development by unlocking local ideas.

1. Citizen Engagement and Entrepreneurship:
Implications for Sustainable Tourism Development
Marianna Sigala
University of South Australia, Australia
marianna.Sigala@unisa.edu.au
Dandison Ukpabi
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
dandison.c.ukpabi@jyu.fi

2. Table of Contents
• Background and brief review
• Objectives
• Brief literature review
• Methodology
• Data analysis and results
• Discussions
• Conclusion

3. Background and brief review
Due to environmental concerns, sustainable tourism development
has continued to generate interest among scholars
Accordingly, different approaches have been suggested to drive
sustainable tourism development and the prominent among them is
through citizen engagement (Okazaki, 2008; Lee, 2013)

4. Background and brief review Cont’d
Defined
“as the active participation of citizens, in
partnership with government, in decision and
policy making processes” (Olphert and
Damodaran, 2007, p.494),
the implementation of citizen engagement takes
different approaches such as town hall meetings,
community development programme initiatives
and competitions.

5. While many competitions exist, hackathons have
become prominent in recent times due the ubiquity
of ICT tools (Wishnie, 2014).
Hackathons are coding competitions
involving programmers who develop
mobile applications within specific time
periods (Leckart, 2012)
Background and brief review Cont’d

6. Results of hackathons are applied for sustainable
use of resources in cities.
Background and brief review Cont’d

7. Within the tourism domain, the results of
hackathon contexts can also be
employed to drive sustainable tourism
development.
Thus, everyday use of technological devices generate a
huge quantity of urban open data that can be developed into
mobile applications to create economic, social and environmental
value for destinations.
Background and brief review Cont’d

8. Interestingly, while numerous studies have
investigated citizen engagement as a tool for fostering
government-citizen relationships, academic literature is
scarce that have examined the role of hackathons
as a citizen engagement tool.
Background and brief review Cont’d

9. Objectives
• To examine the role of citizen engagement on instilling
entrepreneurship
• To evaluate the influence of hackathon contexts as a citizen
engagement tool in promoting sustainable tourism
development

10. Methodology
This paper used the SHARE Challenge as a case study.
SHARE is a competition-based crowdsourcing project
launched by the Government of South Australia aiming to
engage citizens in sharing economy entrepreneurial ventures
through hackathon contexts.

12. The competition received 88 eligible ideas from
different stakeholders, and the study conducted a
content analyses of these ideas for investigating
the profile of the citizens and the type of the
sharing economy ideas that were inspired by the
SHARE.
Methodology Cont’d

13. Presentation and discussion of findings Cont’d
Stakeholders
All stakeholders were represented
Participant
No. ofideas % of ideas
Non-for-profit organisation 15 17.0%
For profit organisation 30 34.1%
Individual 43 48.9%
Total 88 100%
These findings confirm research and anecdotal evidence that the collaborative
economy is applicable and it does provide an entrepreneurial opportunity to any
type of stakeholder.

14. As shown above, there is increasing awareness and understanding on how to
utilise and monetise ‘unused’ space, cars and human resources for generating
economic, social and environmental values.
Resources
Type of Resource
No of ideas % of ideas
Cultural/heritage resources 3 3.4%
Physical / natural resources 4 4.5%
Data / information 5 5.7%
Waste 6 6.8%
Physical human resources (e.g. physical human activity)
9 10.2%
Intellectual human resources (e.g. know how)
11 12.5%
Space 24 27.3%
Physical assets (e.g. tools, equipment, cars)
26 29.5%
Total 88 100%
Presentation and discussion of findings Cont’d

15. The ideas were found to solve a great variety of social problems
but with a great emphasis on underutilised assets/wastage and
unemployment.
Social problem Number Percentage
Crime 2 2.3%
Old-age related 7 8.0%
Unemployment 19 21.6%
Underutilized assets/wastage 55 62.5%
Total 88 100%
Social problems being addressed
Presentation and discussion of findings Cont’d

16. Substantial percentage of ideas were from tourism, agriculture and
homecare/households.
Type of Industry
Industry Number Percentage
Sports/Recreation 1 1.1%
Power and Energy 1 1.1%
Banking/Finance 2 2.3%
Communication/Telecommunication
3 3.4%
Health 6 6.8%
Transportation 8 9.1%
Education 8 9.1%
Real Estate 9 10.2%
Tourism 10 11.4%
Agriculture 14 15.9%
Homecare/Households 26 29.5%
Total 88 100%
Presentation and discussion of findings Cont’d

17. The economic empowerment, job opportunities and the re-
use of wastage/idle assets the SHARE Challenge seeks to
provide is critically important to the SA economy and its
drive towards sustainable tourism development.
Conclusion
Thus, incorporating hackathons as a citizenship engagement
tool will go a long way to promoting entrepreneurship
sustainable tourism development.

18. Conclusion Cont’d
First, locals need to be carried along in designing and delivering social
services. The engagement of citizens in competitive contests like the
SHARE Challenge can unlock ideas which can trigger various
entrepreneurial ventures.
Second, as evidenced from the results, the management of
underutilized assets/wastage accounted for the highest percentage of
the social problems the identified ideas seek to solve. To this end,
utilizing citizen engagement could engender bottom-up approaches to
sustainable tourism development.

19. Conclusion Cont’d
Finally, local authorities and destination management organisations
should, as a matter of policy, incorporate citizen participation in
driving sustainable tourism development. When policy planners
incorporate locals as critical stakeholders in driving policies, the
benefits are often more than when such policies are only top-down.

20. Thank you
Marianna Sigala
marianna.Sigala@unisa.edu.au
Dandison Ukpabi
dandison.c.ukpabi@jyu.fi