This is also true of the exploration of the concrete interests of residents in local tourism and their motivation to demonstrate against it. Although it is acknowledged that residents represent a stakeholder group in tourism, they are still underrepresented in planning processes and possibly do not receive the necessary attention of tourism planners. In particular, residents and the host community, due to their cultural heritage, are important for distinguishing a place from other destinations. Through different studies, it becomes obvious that urban development, especially, is a strategic issue not only for urban planners or tourism managers, but also for tourists and residents. The handling of overtourism requires a widespread discourse that involves many different perspectives, such as the discussion about overloading of infrastructure for tourists and residents, sociocultural changes, or the tourism gentrification of certain districts. Against the background of nearly unregulated tourism growth, tourism managers, service providers, and officials face local protests and demand for regulation. Overtourism has manifested as a subjective perception of “too much” tourism at a certain place at a certain time, which is not limited to objective quantitative statistics, such as tourism intensity, but opens up discussions about the quality of local tourism development. The discourse on overtourism has recently stressed, inter alia, the importance of residents’ participation in tourism development.

The SLR recommendations for future research are based on the interface of LL and DG. The transfer of the LL characteristics towards DG reveals that certain drivers and barriers exist when implementing the LL in the governance process, such as the combination of destination and city planning or the redefining of hierarchical structures. These efforts are operationalized through a systematic literature review (SLR) on LLs, which involves 40 articles. Therefore, the research questions address the characteristics and mechanisms of LLs and the potential for residents’ participation. This article tackles the research gap that exists in the combination of the LL mechanisms and destination governance (DG). One tool to utilize residents’ participation and cross-stakeholder involvement is the Living Lab (LL), which also functions as a medium for self-organization.

This has also called for the participation of residents in governance processes. Growing numbers of tourist arrivals, in combination with community-centered tourism products, have fueled the recent debate on overtourism and a redefining of local steering processes.

Nvivo literature review