The role of agritourism sustainable business model during Covid-19

The Covid-19 is changing the world signalling opportunities and challenges to strengthen the link of tourism with sustainable development. Previous research on sustainable tourism has devoted great attention to agritourism sustainability highlighting the positive consequences on farms and rural destinations. Also, the processes driving agritourism sustainable business model (SBM) and main determinants have been unveiled through a co-evolutionary frame-work, according to a holistic and dynamic view of sustainability. However, how this SBM can help farms to recover from the Covid-19 crisis maintaining themselves sustainable and com-petitive is still neglected. Initial studies on the accommodation sector indicate that business model (BM) adaptation might be a solution to recover from Covid-19. Thus, this study ex-plores how agritourism farms can adapt their SBM during Covid-19 mainly looking at the al-ready identified determinants. To do so, a longitudinal analysis of 20 Italian agritourism farms is conducted focusing on the co-evolutionary farm–rural destination dynamics of agritourism SBM change. Co-evolution conceives the organizations–environments relationship as circular, with mutual influence, and dialectical. Findings show that agritourism SBM can help farms to overcome Covid-19 through diffused multilevel interactions and feedbacks resulting in new organizational practices that innovate their SBM according to an effective co-adaptation pro-cess. This enhances the farm and region’s identities, thus resilience and competitiveness. The study contributes to research and practice on sustainable tourism adding new elements to studies on BM in agritourism, confirming the usefulness of co-evolution for interpreting multi-ple current problems. It helps entrepreneurs and policymakers develop destinations through agritourism SBM innovation.