Investigating Italian food tourism via finite mixture models: revenue generation and sustainability strategies

This study investigates whether the prevalence of environmental sustainability strategies in a tourism destination affects the revenue levels of food and beverage companies, and identifies which specific actions and motivations drive their profits. Integrating Governance and Sustainability Transition theories, it analyses the heterogeneous economic returns of sustainability in the Italian F&B sector using a Finite Mixture Model on a dataset of over 36,000 companies. Three distinct latent classes, corresponding to theoretical transition archetypes, are identified: Locked-in incumbents and resistors (Class 1), characterized by low revenues and reliance on cost-efficiency; Adaptive followers and pragmatic adopters (Class 3), who benefit from stabilizing tourism volume; and Innovation pioneers and early adopters (Class 2), high-performing companies that leverage governance incentives but face diminishing returns from over-tourism congestion. Results show that substantive circular economy actions and fiscal motivations are consistently associated with higher revenues. In contrast, purely reputational motivations and restrictive resource-containment measures are associated with lower revenues, indicating that symbolic adoption without structural change represents a net cost. These findings challenge the assumption of a uniform business case for sustainability, suggesting that while territorial green ecosystems generate positive externalities for all, the ability to monetize them depends on company-level governance embeddedness.