Social Innovation in Depopulating Rural Areas: Exploring Drivers and Barriers and Related Roles of Intermediaries Throughout the Process

Social Innovation (SI) refers to the ability to elaborate novel ideas bringing social value, which positively relates to the involved communities in terms of quality of life, solidarity and well-being, among other aspects. SI may produce or enhance social capital, being based on participation and actors’ mobilization and aims to establish new or improve existing means of collaborative action and/or governance structures. Moreover, it creates new knowledge from the exchange among actors. Sometimes, SI originates from a reaction to social injustice. Indeed, this study investigates an initiative dedicated to solidarity, co-creation and collaboration among rural tourism-related firms located in Sardinian inner rural areas (Barca et al. 2014; Bisaschi et al. 2021). SI may work as a way to overcome social and economic issues affecting such places, through bottom-up or down-up processes often coordinated by innovation intermediaries. This study qualitatively investigates the case of a non-profit initiative, SardiniaSpopTourism, by analysing it under the lens of SI to assess whether or not it can be described in such a way, stressing the SI-related projects’ drivers and barriers and finally considering whether the promoting group acted as an innovation intermediary.