## 6 Concluding Discussion  
Our results show that ICT facilitates collective action by building new management practices, increasing the noticeability of individual actions, and creating artificial proximity between actors in a network. The effective use of ICT has the potential to increase the success of collective action towards sustainable tourism management, especially by offering a way to overcome challenges related to operating in remote locations. However, while the use of ICT can add to the social capital within a network and consequently contribute to the success of collective action [55], social capital goes beyond ICT and is also defined by the relationships between network actors, trust, transparency, interdependence and existing normative systems. Actors can utilize ICT to reshape the relationships within a network, which will have a bearing on their performance [48; 79] as well as the efficacy of collective action by the network. Figure 5: Creating artificial proximity. ICT has the potential to reduce free riding and to better coordinate and monitor the actions of culturally and spatially diverse actor networks [21]. By creating artificial proximity and additional avenues for monitoring, ICT can help to overcome challenges in collective action that are common in larger groups. Our study confirms that large and spatially dispersed actor networks are in a position to successfully manage natural resources provided individual actors share the same goals and collective action is possible. Geographical boundaries can be overcome by the use of ICT [45]. Our research has also shown that, in some cases, it is prudent to consider not only the impact and collective action of local residents but also those of external resource users in sustainable tourism management [19]. However, in line with [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2003) [21], we argue that ICT itself is not sufficient to reduce free riding or increase proximity as actors need to learn how to properly use the respective ICT. We recognize the role of building appropriate management practices drawing on a network's social capital as a necessary element in ensuring the success of ICT use in collective action. Our work has expanded an ongoing debate on ICT in collective action by highlighting the importance of ICT in addressing challenges related to networks operating in remote locations. In particular, in dynamic polar environments such as Svalbard, AECO uses ICT to overcome location-related constraints to collective action, including issues arising from a tourism site's remoteness, challenging operational conditions, a lack of governmental oversight and monitoring of the activities of individual operators, or the temporary nature of Arctic tourism operations. Overall, the success of collective efforts becomes partly dependent on ICT, with the effectiveness of ICT use being built on the interaction between resource users and the wider environment [45]. The research presented in this paper has implications for the development of practices and policy in a broader context that goes beyond the tourism network. Adopting ICT solutions that are tailored to specific networks and give privileged access to network members excludes other actors from participating in collective action, whilst not restricting their access to common-pool resources. This, in turn, means that the most successful collective action to manage common-pool resources may still result in resource degradation or depletion, if actors operating outside established collective action networks cannot be not excluded from resource use [80] or at least required, e.g., by governmental mandates, to operate in accordance with the rules established by the collective action network. Alternatively, non-member operators could be encouraged to join a network, but this traditionally only works if they already share similar values and backgrounds with an existing network's members, which in turn increases network homogeneity [81]. The latter can also be strengthened by creating dependence on network-specific technologies.