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This paper addresses the role of voluntary environmental initiatives by the tourism industry to alleviate social dilemmas for the management of natural resources. The objective is to explore whether previous findings on the determinants of voluntary action in the management of common-pool resources (CPR) also apply to a sector, such as tourism, where non-extractive uses are dominant. The paper applies the social-ecological systems framework recently developed by Ostrom (Science, 325, 419–422, 2009) to analyze qualitative data from meta-analyses of successful voluntary environmental initiatives in tourism. Results show that the determinants of voluntary action in tourism are partially consistent with previous research on CPR, finding relevant the presence of leadership, norms of behavior among members of the voluntary initiatives, shared mental modes, salience of the resource for users, and …