Keywords

Consumer misbehavior is well known in the tourist industry: the ugly American bemoaning the heat in Rome, the drunk Australian littering a Balinese beach, the European trampling over majestic Majorca. These tourist stereotypes are labeled rude and insensitive, seeming to willfully destroy idyllic natural and cultural treasures. Welcomed for their economic stimuli, reviled for their behavior, and yet accepted as part of a mature tourist industry, they come and they spend. Local cash registers ring. Yet, when holidaymakers encounter the Nordic hybrid nature-based marketplace, some unintentionally misbehave in ways that violate the broad social contract that characterizes the Nordic countries (World Economic Forum, Davos 2011). Recently, topics like “Tourists camping in the graveyard,” “Parking chaos in Lofoten,” “The forest of shit,” and “Tourists invade private property” (www.nrk.no/nordland, 2016/17) have been the headlines in the Norwegian media. One may wonder: Why do consumers misbehave?

Consumer misbehavior is defined as behavioral acts which “violate the generally accepted norms of conduct in consumption situations, and thus disrupt the consumption order,” with consequences of either material loss and/or psychological damage affecting marketers, marketing institutions, and other consumers (Fullerton and Punj 2004, p. 1239). Misbehavior usually involves shoplifting, vandalism, financial fraud, aggression, or sexual harassment (Yagil 2008), which affects firms, service employees, and other consumers (Faber et al. 1995), and compulsive consumption (ibid.) or substance addiction (Hirschman 1992), which affects consumers themselves. However, some level of misbehavior is tolerated by suppliers, acknowledged as part of the financial and social costs of doing business.

This psychological approach to consumer misbehavior (Fisk et al. 2010) leaves explanations of misbehavior in cross-cultural contexts under-theorized. Taking a cultural lens to misbehavior, we extend the findings that “many of the driving forces of legitimate consumer behavior have simultaneously been stimulants of consumer misbehavior” (Fullerton and Punj 2004, p. 1244). While social systems of different cultures may share many similarities, the differences as they arise in consumer behavior can be profound. Invoking Foucauldian reasoning, we employ “governing” and “modes of thought” which indicate that it is impossible to study “technologies of power without an analysis of the political rationality underpinning them” (Lemke 2001, p. 191). Our attention is directed toward the co-presence of heterogeneous norms, values, and morals, or what we refer to as regimes, and how consumer misbehavior can be explained in the midst of several higher-order justification principles (Corvellec and Hultman 2014). Behavioral justification is then conventionalized with underlying values and rules that govern consumers’ beliefs about why certain acts are normal and good (Biggart and Beamish 2003) or “right” or “wrong” in a specific social context.

We investigate consumer misbehavior under conditions of two competing forms of regimes, the neoliberal and Nordic welfare state regimes. We do so through analyses of stakeholders’ views, including media headlines that report tourist misbehavior such as those described earlier, and discuss how such stories can be an unintended consequence of exacerbating competing values and norms which originate in structures outside the consumption context. This chapter contributes to a novel framework for understanding consumption misbehavior, the role of social order in a Nordic context, and tensions that appear when the neoliberal consumption regime meets a competing Nordic marketplace logic. In other words: How can tensions among consumption regimes help explain consumer misbehavior in a tourism context?

The context of our study is one of the iconic tourist destinations of Norway, the Lofoten Islands. While Norway’s visitor population at commercial accommodation grew 27% between 2000 and 2014, Lofoten’s grew 50% (Eilertsen 2016). Promoted as “The world’s most beautiful islands” (Lofoten Travel Guide 2014), tourists come to enjoy experiences among mountain ranges rising from the sea under the summer midnight sun and the winter northern lights. They arrive by plane, passenger boat, coastal steamer, or with a car or camper on a ferry. However, not all are on their best behavior. The head of the Lofoten Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) fears that the tourism industry will end up becoming an “industry of conflicts,” and the chair of Lofoten’s Outdoor Recreation Council argues that tourist misbehavior is a problem that needs solving: “Lofoten’s a big headache—we need to take control” (Eilertsen 2016). Lofoten residents want to know: Why can’t the tourists just behave?

Perceptions of Misbehavior

Shopkeepers and service providers grant consumers a form of impersonal trust; that is, having faith in people whom one does not know personally. Consumer conduct is implicitly allied with a social contract (e.g., Steiner et al. 1976) and acts of consumer misbehavior violate this contract and its underlying trust. Consumers who drift into this realm engage in variations of misbehavior such as shoplifting, vandalism, financial fraud, and physical or verbal abuse of other consumers and of employees. Some misbehavior is premeditated and deliberate. For example, the intent of an act of vandalism could be to show defiance toward a large, commercial institution (e.g., Baron and Fisher 1984), or to enjoy a thrilling experience (e.g., Katz 1988), or maybe to gain the approval of peers (e.g., Sutherland 1947).

However, other acts labeled as deviant by the labeler may not necessarily be unethical or even illegal. Instead, they violate a normalized morality. Such behavior is an unintended consequence of the marketing activities of firms, which seek to promote a philosophy of consumption so that consumers will buy more. Fullerton and Punj (1998) argue that “widespread misbehavior by consumers … is inevitable given the dynamics of (neo-liberal) consumer culture” (p. 408). They identify 35 types of misbehavior, ranging “from the intricacy of insurance fraud and database theft on the one hand, to mindless thuggery in mall parking lots on the other” (p. 409). Three of these values related to morality and the calculation of opportunism are evident amongst misbehaving tourists. The first, the Absence of Moral Constraints, explains that “when the urges of the self are paramount—especially amidst a prevailing ethos of abandon and excitement—moral constraints against misbehavior are weakened” (p. 404). Likewise, an Openness of Exchange Environment suggests that “some environments are so powerfully designed, so exciting to consumers, that they become ‘sensually endowed and miraculously constituted perfectly for the emergent project in deviance’” (Katz 1988, p. 56 in Fullerton and Punj 1998, p. 404). A combination of Hedonism and Deviant Thrill-Seeking “misbehavior enables some thrill-crazed consumers to fulfil their cravings in an exciting way, adding to the exhilaration of the consumption experience” (p. 404). Tourists escape the mundane conventions of city life to enjoy the powerful freedom of nature. A homogeneity of values and socially accepted morality underscores each of these pathways to unintended misbehavior. The tourist, by definition, is removed from the familiar and seeks experiences in the wider world, but might not be aware of the social contract of the region they are visiting.

The Neoliberal Regime: Consumer-Tourist

Neoliberalism in social theory has long been a focus of academic study and we don’t intend to fully review its versions and critiques here. We are interested in consumption models under the condition of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism “proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (Harvey 2010, p. 2), with the state’s role mainly enforcing the conditions for the free market to thrive. Neoliberal consumerism is a way of life and a realm within which the power relations of contemporary society are played out (Yngfalk 2015, p. 3). Consequently, the ideal markets would be those that are competitive and that commodify nearly everything, including not only the economic spheres but also the cultural and social spheres of public and private life (Dwyer 2018). The allegedly necessary “freedom” of the economy thus consists of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society (von Werlhof 2008). This version of “deep-neoliberalism” operates through “a multiplicity of governing networks, nodes and modes that allow for far greater levels of contingency and context-specific variation” (Venugopal 2015, p. 170).

In contemporary (western) consumer culture, people live under various forms of neoliberal regimes within which consumers become subject to indirect forms of power that are exercised by institutional frameworks and various organizations in the management of populations (Yngfalk 2015). This involves, amongst other things, the delineation of concepts, the specification of objects, and the provision of arguments and justifications related to the marketplace.

We use the concept of consumer-tourism to characterize the consumption role associated with market-oriented neoliberal regimes. First, consumer-tourism is situated in the relationship between private firms and consumers. In global markets the consumer-tourist has the freedom to travel and is encouraged to spend time away from home for an enriched lifestyle and increased well-being (Shankar et al. 2006). Second, the model is distinctive in the manner in which consumers choose and receive goods and services. The relationship between the firm and the consumer is transaction oriented and instrumental, with a focus on individual interests and need satisfaction. The third aspect, particularly relevant here, concerns the legitimate conduct of the exchange situation. Engaging in transactions, consumer-tourists expect the provider to protect and serve them. In a Ritzerian optic, the consumers would engage in pre-scripted and pre-packaged holidays (Ritzer 1996) that industry stakeholders carefully plan and execute to ensure hedonic experiences for the consumer-tourist, but ultimately economic growth, jobs, and rising incomes at the destination. The conduct of the consumer-tourist in neoliberal regimes is not very demanding at a destination, because the firms expect little from the individual other than payment for the product.

Consumer and tourism research shows how consumer-tourists seek antistructure (Turner 1969), often at a distance from everyday urban structures, that results in hedonic experiences distinguished by the communion of shared liminality and sacredness (e.g., Arnould and Price 1993; Kozinets 2002; Sharpe 2005). Many consumer-tourism practices entail a “gazing” tourist role, which is how people learn to consume places through organized tourism under neoliberal conditions (Lash and Urry 1994; Perkins and Thorns 2001; Urry 1990, 2002; Urry and Larsen 2011). When consumer-tourists encounter the Nordic welfare state regime, neoliberal conditions may not fully apply.

Nordic Welfare State Regime: Citizenship-Tourism

Through a Foucauldian lens, consumers are often objectified and subjectified within the neoliberal ideology, which means that governmentality both acts on people and makes them empowered subjects. Through this dialectic the agent may act “freely” in a field of action that is structured by a certain truth (Denegri-Knott et al. 2018). Although critical tourism movements suggest alternatives such as slow tourism, transformative tourism, and socially responsible tourism, the neoliberal mindset and taken-for-granted assumptions are so established that it creates a powerful incentive within people to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools in global tourism (Dwyer 2018).

In certain Nordic markets, especially at rural tourist destinations, we think that visiting tourists might “meet” consumption regimes that depart from the prevailing neoliberal regime to a certain extent. This does not mean that Nordic consumer culture can be thought of as homogeneous (Østergaard et al. 2014), because global capitalism and individualism are accepted in the midst of structures such as state intervention and egalitarianism. Consumption and market configurations between cultural regions can be quite different (Cova 2005). In order to provide some normative and moral grounding for Nordic regional specificities, we draw on the work of the historian Trägårdh’s (2010) theorization of the Nordic welfare state.

In contrast to Anglo-American welfare models, the Nordic model is based on social (democratic) citizenship, which was developed in the twentieth century and characterized by the way in which fundamental entitlements, such as education, health care, child care, and pensions, have been granted universally to individuals on the basis of citizenship (Trägårdh 2010). The main difference depends on the individuals’ acceptance of state intervention or not. According to Berggren and Trägårdh (2010), there is a general antipathy toward state intervention in the USA, whereas the social-democratic influence in the Nordic countries means there is much greater acceptance of the alliance between the state and the individual citizen. Ideally, in Anglo-American contexts the individual citizen should provide for him- or herself in the field of the market and trusting the goodwill of the family and the community, whereas the social citizenship of Nordic state regimes reflects an ideal of mutual autonomy between individuals and an ambition to “liberate the individual citizen from all forms of subordination and dependency in civil society” (Berggren and Trägårdh 2010, p. 13), for example the poor from charity, the workers from their employers, wives from their husbands. Deeply held values are often referred to as relatively open markets, strong welfare systems, egalitarianism (Østergaard et al. 2014), and, as a consequence, social capital, trust, and welfare-based individual autonomy (Trägårdh 2010; Wollebaek et al. 2012).

The Nordic welfare state regime contrasts with the neoliberal regime in important ways. First, in the neoliberal regime civil society, often referred to as the non-profit sector, is regarded as prior to, distinct, and autonomous from the state. In this narrative, Trägårdh (2010, p. 231) argues, “the state is always seen as harboring a potential for domination, intervention, regulation, collectivism and positive law imposed arbitrarily from above,” which also has an impact on the market (profit) sector. Ideally, however, the market must be freed from the state so that choices are made available to consumers. This division of state–civil society–market does not harmonize well with the Nordic model. Instead, the state plays a major role in most affairs of the region, resulting in high levels of taxes and a large public sector, but also social equality and a linked governance structure between the state, the civil sector, and the market. For example, a tourist destination would be one dependent on state priority and protection, often through direct payments (e.g., entrepreneurial support) and indirect investments (e.g., infrastructure), whereas the development locally would be viewed as a governance alliance between the state (local/regional government), civil society, and the corporate world. The marketplace then consists of stakeholders from all three sectors of society, and state intervention and citizen democratic influence go “hand in hand” with private firms.

Second, the Nordic welfare model has consequences for the social contract. While social citizenship grants universal benefits and thus social equality and egalitarianism, the consequence is, according to Trägårdh (Berggren and Trägårdh 2010; Trägårdh 2010), increased individual autonomy. Whereas individualism under the neoliberal regime signifies empowerment of the freedom to choose (Shankar et al. 2006), the logic under the Nordic state regime is rather different: “active interventionism on the part of the state to promote egalitarian conditions is not a threat to individual autonomy but rather the obverse: a necessary prerequisite to free the citizens from demeaning and humbling dependence on one another” (Berggren and Trägårdh 2010, p. 16). The state–individual alliance can be seen as dialectical, where the state takes care of individuals who at the same time are freed from dependencies (cf., rights of children, women, elderly, disabled, consumers). According to Trägårdh, and not without historical reference to a lack of feudal institutions and strong peasant and fishing cultures, the most important moral codes are self-sufficiency and independence, or fear of becoming subservient and unequal. The social contract relies on conformism, democratic participation, equality, and being law-abiding on the one hand, and property rights norms, high trust (interpersonal and governmental), self-improvement (education, work; Trägårdh 2010), and the ideal of the well-behaved and wholesome worker (Trägårdh and Svedberg 2013), along with little respect for authority, on the other.

Third, state interventionism and the somewhat paradoxical social contract have consequences for how the marketplace works in the Nordic model. The regime’s morality, mostly through a tacit mindset, implies that social rights have to be earned by attending to duties and responsibilities. For citizens this means three demands: labor-market participation, social respectability, and social responsibility—including oneself and one’s family (Lundberg and Åmark 2001). In rural Nordic regions, the citizenship-tourism model implies that consumption is not merely a right by transaction, but rather a right by citizenship participation.

The citizen-tourist is expected to earn social rights through active involvement in local activities and experiences, and to behave well according to the moral codes of the social contract. Those who do not live up to the citizenship involvement contract are deemed unworthy and undeserving, and may become subject to harsh and unsentimental treatment by actors in the marketplace.

Method

We employ heterogeneity as a useful way to study consumer misbehavior. While maintaining the frame of the neoliberal regime, we can also examine alternatives found in the Nordic welfare state regime. Whereas neoliberalism and the state (Bauman 2001) intersect on the large scale at modes of public governance and administration in western contexts, for instance as discussed related to Nordic practices of food consumption (Draper and Green 2002) and food labeling (Yngfalk 2015), we investigate consumption heterogeneity when international tourists visit a remote tourism area in Norway’s Lofoten Islands. We focus on local and regional stakeholders’ interpretations of heterogeneity during instances when consumers’ misbehavior “is inevitable given by the dynamics of (neo-liberal) consumer culture” (Fullerton and Punj 1998, p. 408). The social contract of such a market is paradoxical due to the co-presence of multiple values and morals, and ongoing disputes about how to consume the place prevail in the media.

This study privileges the “context of the context” (Askegaard and Linnet 2011) rather than consumers’ lived experiences. Within the context we find important actors—that is, DMOs, residents, tourism providers—all holders of cultural values foundational to the Nordic welfare state regime. This research also relies on multiple methods of data collection, whereas socio-historical data, much of it retrieved through online resources, and ethnographic-inspired fieldwork (Arnould and Wallendorf 1994) constitute the main sources. In addition, three research seminars were organized among the researchers during the interpretive process. Participant observations in Lofoten and interviews with various stakeholders on site are the main sources of primary data.

Stakeholder Data

The participants for the in-depth interviews were selected based on the results of an initial interview with an informant employed by the Northern Norway DMO who had exhaustive knowledge of the Lofoten destination: its socio-historical development, its present and future challenges, and which stakeholders would provide knowledge of market formation dynamics. This recruitment process allowed for the selection of participants who either played a significant role in the market formation of the destination or had insights and opinions about such processes. We contacted the participants through e-mails and phone calls and made appointments with citizens, business managers, DMOs, consultants in tourism and regional development, and advisors at the county level. This resulted in the participants listed in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1 Stakeholder participants
Full size table

Most of these interviews (10) were conducted in English, and the research team visited the participants in their offices. The rest of the interviews (5) were conducted in Norwegian and later translated into English.

All interviews were taped and transcribed. Inspired by hermeneutic interpretation (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2009), we attained analytical scrutiny through spiral interplay between the various empirical texts, the cultural-historical meaning of Lofoten, and the meso/macro dimensions related to market formation of this destination; that is, through interpretive processes of zooming in and out (Gherardi 2006). Since we aimed at studying processes of consumption in contested places, it was important to follow challenges between views and practices and the impact on the development of Lofoten as a market. Thus, we tried to identify what happened, and how and why it happened, from various stakeholder viewpoints (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). To complement such interpretations, we took advantage of being an international research team and organized ex post research discussions after the interviews to improve the interpretive scrutiny in the midst of historical, cultural, and textual meanings. These research team discussions were also taped and transcribed.

Results: Misbehavior between Neoliberal and Nordic Welfare State Regimes

Generalities of what constitutes serious misbehavior remain uncontested, for instance shoplifting versus fraud. Yet violation of the spirit of the Nordic regime is also labeled misbehavior by Lofoten residents, the keepers of the cultural values and norms. They take exception to tourists’ activities that violate the values underlying particularly Nordic concepts of authenticity, uniqueness of the location, and every man’s (sic) right to access the land. Two themes contribute to the tensions that underpin regime misfit, and in particular the Nordic value of every man’s right to access the land.

The first theme is tourists’ misinterpretation of the collective rights of the culture. While the beauty of the islands can be gazed at from a chair in front of a café, the rugged nature of the landscape means that trained mountain guides are often required for more adventurous activities. As one hotel manager explains: “You have to know the archeology and to know that the mountains, where to go, the weather … it’s not that easy to take the guests out into the nature here.” Industry providers take measures toward a balance between the desires of international guests and the rigor of mountain hiking. The manager continues:

When we get a lot of international guests—if it’s a couple or just two people coming we will send them—we look at them and see how they are dressed and … what kind of shoes they have. We will point out hiking trips for them, if they are alone. If there is a big group then we try to use (local adventure provider) XX Lofoten or some other company to run the trip for them so we are assured of the security.

Tourists who forgo the services of guides often take shortcuts on dangerous mountain routes, putting their own lives and the fragile mountainside flora at risk. In the fishing village of Reine, locals complain that “tourists go everywhere,” as the hotel manager explains:

some places in Lofoten … the paths are ruined because there are too many people walking there … we have one path that has been there for centuries and when it’s wet people just try to get another path and you get the grass…. Erosion. The small rocks start to fall. Which is a big problem now….

A representative of a community consulting firm concurs:

Every year tourists die or are injured because the mountains here, are not—for me—I mean, I grew up here so I know how to handle those mountains, but Russian tourists from Moscow have never done that before. You need tourists that ask you if you can go there and then it’s like “No. Go back the way you came! <laughs> You’re not equipped to go up that mountain!”

Damage from erosion and “forests of shit” spoil the experience for others. Yet it is among these tourists that DMOs find the iconic images of Lofoten’s extreme adventure lifestyle that provides appeal to others, including “soft-adventure” and gazing tourists:

DMO::

The best ones for us is not extreme sport tourist, but they give us the best image. They… bring other people to us. They made Lofoten cool. It is young, it is powerful, it is extreme. But they have no—this is not the people who use the money here.

Interviewer::

Okay, they don’t stay in the hotels…

DMO::

No, they could buy a beer or something but they are out and they do a lot of old crew and stuff.

Interviewer::

But they work for you and…

DMO::

They sent picture in social media … and they felt “this is beautiful. You have to come here and take a look.”

The community consultant concurs:

Some of them don’t leave much money behind. They stay in tents and there is some ripple effects on like—they buy some food and they drink some beer and that’s it. They’re very important for the social economy, though. And couch surfers and people like that. Many of those in that young segment has Lofoten and the surfing in Lofoten as like, on their bucket list.

Stakeholders (i.e., domestic tourists, county officials, regional DMOs) argue that trust, trustworthiness, respect, and responsibility are central tourist values. However, county officials and DMOs note that many tourists fail adjusting to the citizenship-tourism model. Many tourists misbehave, for example by littering and invading private property, and this is referred to as unworthy, disrespectful, and irresponsible toward the collective ethos of Lofoten cultural values.

The inherent paradox here is related to how tourists misinterpret the state-provided benefits of Nordic citizenship. The benefit of moving freely in nature (“public access law”), parking, and tenting almost anywhere are collective rights, which means that tourists are granted the same rights and “become” citizens the moment they enter Lofoten. The problem is that many do not understand the responsibility that comes with Nordic social citizenship. The egalitarian freedom comes at the cost of respectability and social responsibility, and not just monetary costs.

The second theme is touristic non-authentic gazing. Lofoten was a nexus for visitors of a very different sort for decades: the fishermen came for the Arctic cod every winter, staying in small cottages and fishing the icy waters. They brought economic value to the small villages in the archipelago and returned to the mainland at the end of the season. Today these cottages are rented to tourists. They have been updated to suit modern tourists’ aesthetics, while also maintaining markers of Lofoten’s cultural heritage. These tourists visit the local cod fishing and Viking museums, eat traditional Norwegian meals in the local restaurants, and hire local guides for a modern-day fishing adventure. The DMO explains:

people from forty-plus … or forty through sixty … these people came here, they used their money in the restaurants and the hotel and they want to eat well and sleep well. They will pay for activities and they will not go by their own. They want to go kayaking, fishing with dream boats and other things. They want to watch the seagulls … and they pay for everything. They pay for everything.

These are the desired tourists. Some stakeholders believe that visitors should be interested in culturally authentic experiences or just stay away. One Samee reindeer farmer wants to attract tourists who will pay for authentic encounters and so she maintains her prices high to keep “the gazing tourists away…. She wants exclusive culturally interested people that really ask questions about the Samee way of living and the reindeer and all that kind of thing” (field notes discussion). Many of these gazing tourists add little to the economy:

Interviewer::

We saw one thing—these Germans turning up—

DMO::

Ugh.

Interviewer::

—in the big campers and—

DMO::

Middle-aged … fifty plus.

Interviewer::

They’re arriving there in this big truck and then sitting outside and watching this thing going by.

Interviewer::

When we’re traveling around we see people camping and we see people with…

Consultant::

Mmm! Yeah. I forgot the campers because the caravans are not the most popular group of tourists.

Interviewer::

People with trucks and caravans…

Consultant::

Yeah.

Interviewer::

So, they are popular or not so popular?

Consultant::

I don’t know because often … before they brought sort of everything from Sweden or Germany or wherever they came from. They stop here and then they dump their toilet in the roads on the side and don’t really leave as much money as they leave trash.

Debates on local media underscore the tensions around grazing tourists: “There are a lot of international tourists that act as if they are in an amusement park” (NRK TV). One county official notes: “They do not understand they’re visiting a living society. It is as if they are visiting Disneyland.” From these stakeholders’ perspective, tourists act as if they were “consumers” who have paid a price for the “right” to consume. These actions are deemed misbehavior if they relate to violations of centrally held values. Another county official suggests more oversight from the state, arguing that “policy makers should decide the structure of tourism,” regulating tourism and private businesses so that Lofoten maintains carrying capacity and develops legitimacy as a “trustworthy” destination. A manager concurs, arguing that increased governmental regulation is necessary:

That’s my nightmare—that so much people are coming here and there’s no regulations. You can throw your garbage away, and you can do whatever you like. You can fish as much as you like. Today I know about six fishing companies from Eastern Europe that sell trophy fishing in this region to their home market.

Not only do these tourists fail to convey the youthful extreme-adventurousness of photogenic backpackers, they also demonstrate self-sufficiency and contained needs, adding little to the commons of the Nordic. They visit the place not as visitors but as “gazers,” who regard Lofoten as an amusement park which can be experienced from a distance. Or, as a recent headline in the local newspaper indicates: “The tourists know their rights in nature, but not the responsibilities” (Lofoten Post, October 2, 2018). The local stakeholders deem such behavior unworthy and undeserving, misbehaving according to the spirit of the Nordic welfare system.

Discussion

This study contributes to consumer misbehavior research (Fullerton and Punj 1997, 1998, 2004) and conceptualizes regime misfit as tensions between the Nordic welfare and neoliberal models. Taking a socio-cultural approach, we extend consumer misbehavior theory beyond the individualized frame of reference. We also illuminate the origins of tensions between neoliberal consumption and Nordic state-based consumption models that originate both within and outside the marketplace. Thus, we enlarge the interpretive framework for how to understand misbehavior and tensions during consumption. We argue that the consumption conflict is not necessarily between consumers or between consumers and producers, or between marketplace dynamics, but rather between structural regimes at play when globalized consumerism meets the social order of a local Nordic marketplace.

In the Nordic model, the individual is a citizen, with the morality of the commons, and the expectations are that civil society along with the state are the major arbiters to maintain egalitarian rights. In the neoliberal model, the individual is a consumer and civil society is based on the morality of the individual and expectations of limited involvement by the state as an arbiter for the free market. Market interactions between buyers and sellers are familiar to both. However, the case of Lofoten illuminates the gulf between moralities and expectations of appropriate social behavior, privileging the commons for the Nordic model and the individual for the neoliberal model. These tensions, combined with increasing numbers of tourists (Eilertsen 2016), put pressure on the infrastructure and access to nature and try the patience of stakeholders in the tourist market.

Media and stakeholders’ reports of tourist misbehavior in Lofoten underscore the ways in which consumer misbehavior is unintentionally stimulated by heterogeneity between regimes co-present in the marketplace. The hybrid Nordic model includes the freedom of choice found in the neoliberal model, alongside the values of a social safety net and shared access to the land. What consumer-tourists seem to miss is the nuances of citizenship behavior expected of them. A cultural lens illuminates these missteps and suggests extension of the misbehavior concept to accommodate heterogeneous moralities. We submit that consumer misbehavior is not only a psychological construct, but also relative to context. Contrasts between the Lofoten Islands as a culturally rich homeland and a Disneyesque destination exemplify the divide between the Nordic welfare state and neoliberal logics.

Our cultural analysis extends several concepts of consumer misbehavior. For instance, the Absence of Moral Constraint under the Nordic welfare logic exacts a lower degree of selfishness, “when the urges of self are paramount” (Fullerton and Punj 1998, p. 404), to constitute misbehavior; that is, leaving trash and camping adjacent to an inhabited home. In misbehavior according to the Openness of Exchange Environment typology, the “environments are so powerfully designed, so exciting to consumers, that they become ‘sensually endowed and miraculously constituted perfectly for the emergent project in deviance’” (Katz 1988, p. 56 in Fullerton and Punj 1998, p. 404); the combination of Hedonism and Deviant Thrill-Seeking “misbehavior enables some thrill-crazed consumers to fulfil their cravings in an exciting way, adding to the exhilaration of the consumption experience” (p. 404), and is evident in consumer-tourists’ disregard for proper pathways, proper waste disposal, and over-use erosion on the mountain paths. While life-long Lofoten residents, such as the consultant cited earlier, understand the danger to both nature and visitors and make efforts to guide the misbehaving toward better and safer paths, the neoliberal model has little room for a deep appreciation of nature as a place of commons, or for the relationship between common access and common responsibility.

Fullerton and Punj (1997) suggest two control techniques for consumer misbehavior. The first of these is an educational effort to inform tourists of the values of the Nordic social system, and relies on the majority of consumers exerting informal sanctions against miscreants. The underlying assumption is that misbehaving tourists will curb their ways when faced with information and informal public disapproval. The second technique is deterrence, which includes both formal and informal sanctions while also limiting the opportunity for misbehavior to occur, employing surveillance and increased possibility of punishment. The authors are careful to note that control strategy effectiveness varies among different consumers. Fullerton and Punj (1997) claim that both education and deterrence control techniques have low to moderate likelihoods of reaching misbehaving consumers who display an Absence of Moral Constraint, are enticed by an Openness of Exchange Environment, and exhibit Hedonism and Deviant Thrill-Seeking behaviors.

Incongruence between the Nordic welfare state citizenship-tourism and the neoliberal economic logic of consumer-tourism represents a source of regime conflict between notions of “rights and responsibility” on the one hand and “rights to access” on the other. Global tourism legitimizes access based on the ability to pay, with the expectation that all externalities and costs (including environmental and social costs) can be adequately accounted for through a commodity mechanism in which the only requirement for tourists is to pay toward the costs associated with these impacts, which are duly factored into the costs of tourist products, services, and experiences via market mechanisms. Without appreciation of the role of civil society as distinct from the state and foundational morality of the Nordic commons, writ broadly, consumer-tourists only see the “rights to access.” They don’t participant in the Nordic welfare system as residents and as such have little to do with the “rights and responsibilities” of citizenship. This is not to say that it is not incumbent on consumer-tourists to be made culturally aware.

Of greater concern is that the fissure between the Nordic welfare state and the neoliberal economic logic may be widening. Limited communal responsibility, once familiar in western democracies, has been diluted by what Giesler and Veresiu (2014) call increased consumer responsibilization. They argue that rather than an “influence of moralistic governance regimes on consumer subjectivity … responsible consumption requires the active creation and management of consumers as moral subjects” (Giesler and Veresiu 2014, p. 840). Where the responsibility for moral behavior sits with neoliberal consumer-tourists, they must manage themselves within the regime of the Nordic model. The issue is a matter of expectations and opportunity. According to the World Economic Forum Davos Nordic report, “the Nordic countries … are characterized by a broad social trust extended beyond the intimate sphere of family and friends to include other members of society (World Economic Forum 2011, p. 16)…. In addition to putting a strong emphasis on individual self-realization these countries are characterized by a high degree of social trust: well over 50% of respondents claim to trust other people, including strangers” (p. 17). Applying Giesler and Veresiu’s (2014) theorizing, it seems that misbehaving tourists are operating according to their individualized moral positions. With the neoliberal system effectively outsourcing morality to consumers, “the consequences of the action are borne by the subject alone, who is also solely responsible for them” (Lemke 2001, p. 201). Consequently “consumers are reconstructed as free, autonomous, rational, and entrepreneurial subjects who draw on individual market choices to invest in their own human capital, such that the need for top-down intervention into the (neo-liberal) market is rendered obsolete” (Giesler and Veresiu 2014, p. 841) Thus, according to the nuanced Nordic moral citizenship guidelines inherent in the norms of Nordic civil society, there is an increasing likelihood that consumer-tourists will misbehave. When these consumers find themselves in this new form of governmentality, with a competing basis of moral behavior, they break no actual laws, but violate the spirit of the law. This puts at risk the resident/tourism relationship balance.

Efforts to curb the issue are outlined in strategy documents, interviews, and the media. The “Strategy Plan for Lofoten Tourism (2017–2022)” calls attention to how Lofoten can reject the expectations of tourists and instead facilitate soft adventure tourism (Steen 2017, p. 4). Several stakeholders, especially DMOs and businesses, work toward designing (guided) experience products to cope with non-authentic gazing tourists, while the municipality and regional advisors work with infrastructure improvements (e.g., rest rooms, information) to cope with misinterpretations of the collective rights of the place. For example, the “hiking sign project” and communicating “Lofoten codes of conduct” to tourists are expected to educate tourists on how to act responsibly and in a trustworthy manner. Extending Fullerton and Punj (1997), the Lofoten community efforts rely on redirecting product offerings and infrastructure improvements, in addition to the theorized education efforts. Further research is however needed to shed light on the efforts to cope with the tensions between competing regimes of the marketplace.

While DMOs, tour providers, and officials work toward a solution, the tourists continue to come to Lofoten, adding to the economy, posting iconic photographs of the “world’s most beautiful islands,” and misbehaving.

This chapter introduced the concept of “regime misfit” to explain how consumer misbehavior is unintentionally stimulated by tensions between values co-present in the marketplace. We relied particularly on local stakeholder perspectives, exposing the ways visitors misbehave in the context of the Nordic welfare regime. The regime misfit we theorized was one between the neoliberal and Nordic welfare state regimes. More research is needed to understand the values and morality that underlie such tensions and misbehavior. Finally, one may wonder how regime misfit may explain consumer misbehavior in highly neoliberal contexts. Future research is needed to understand the extent to which visitors are aware of misbehaving, particularly in cross-cultural contexts.