The blue economy and well-being in a small island destination

Introduction

This study aims to examine the Blue Economic Paradigm (BEP) application to a small island destination. Oceans are increasingly critical in linking countries through trade and as a source of directly providing and supporting the livelihood of many countries around the globe. Small islands are in desperate need of economic and social sustainability, striving to overcome scale constraints and propel economic development and diversity (Croes, Ridderstaat, and Van Niekerk, 2018). BEP is a developmental approach that could assist small island destinations to achieve their developmental goal of sustainability. A blue destination is the organization of human development and ecological health. The United Nations references the need to combine human development and ecological health in its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14. SDG 14 of the United Nations encourages the responsible use of the ocean resources intertwined with eco-friendly "green codes." Beyond the United Nations reference to BEP there is paucity in the tourism literature as only a handful of studies have applied the BEP (Phelan, Ruhanen and Mair, 2020). In addition, tourism literature reveals that the BEP approach has experienced limited success in practice (Dwyer, 2018; Leposa, 2020). This study's main contribution is to explore the complexity of BEP as applied to resident’s well-being in a small island destination.