遗产地农村社区参与旅游发展的制度嵌入性——丹霞山瑶塘村与断石村比较研究

基于制度嵌入性理论,采用质性研究方法,采取主位的研究立场,揭示正式制度与非正式制度对农村社区参与旅游发展的约束与影响。研究发现：遗产地农村社区参与旅游发展是一个制度约束下的理性行动过程,同时嵌入在多层正式制度和非正式制度中;不同农村社区在参与旅游发展过程中,由于制度嵌入的差异,导致相异的行动决策和发展结果,社区内部非正式制度嵌入的差异是主要影响因素;当社区内部非正式制度脱嵌时,外部正式制度的有效嵌入是协调遗产地与社区发展的关键因素。研究认为,制度嵌入性范式可以深入地解释不同农村社区参与旅游发展的差异性,为中国农村社区参与旅游发展的增权行动、制度设计和监督管理提供有益参考。

Tourism participation of rural communities at the heritage sites in the perspective of institutional embeddedness: A comparative study of Yaotang village and Duanshi village in the Danxia Mountain

Community participation and resident empowerment in tourism development has long been a central tenet of sustainable tourism development, which attracts substantive attention in the tourism geography arena. In recent years, a rising number of studies on tourism geography have discussed how to raise community participation and increase the benefits for local residents through institutional empowerment, either from the "top down" policy and legislation, or from the "bottom up" informal institution within communities. However, few studies have moved beyond discussing how institutions are embedded into community residents' decision making and actions in an emic perspective. This paper draws on insights from the new institutionalism and the new economic sociology, as a corrective to the dominant focus in the academic literature on the decision-making of community subjects. Thus, the paper applies the theory of institutional embeddedness to indicate what and how institutions constrain or motivate community residents' decision-making and corresponding actions in the process of tourist destination development. Qualitative methodology and grounded theory are applied in the case studies of two typical tourism communities in the Danxia Mountain, the only World Natural Heritage Site in Guangdong province. The two communities, which are located within the scenic spot and are adjacent to each other, have manifested different modes of decision-making in tourism participation while sharing a similar development background in the past three decades. The result shows that the decision-making behaviors of community subjects are rational choices embedded into multilayer institutions, which, generally speaking, include formal institutions like policies and legislation made by the government departments and the concrete destination management institutions, and informal institutions such as the clan culture, community group decision rules, folk rules, perception of fair value and many other traditional views and concepts. Particularly, the paper reveals that the difference of informal institutions existing in the two communities is the main reason for the different modes of decision making in tourism participation process, which significantly affects the benefits the local residents could receive from tourism. It is notable that the effective embeddedness of external formal institutions plays a key role in coordinating the relationship between heritage site development and community development when the internal informal institutions of the local community turn out disembedding. Finally, the paper indicates that the theory of institutional embeddedness facilitates an in-depth analysis of the different modes of tourism participation of rural communities, which provides a significant insight for both the government departments and the industrial sectors to institution design for engaging community participation in tourism development.