Making ethnic tourism good for the poor

Author

Jean Junying LOR
Shelly KWA
John A. DONALDSON, Singapore Management UniversityFollow

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

5-2019

Abstract

How can ethnic tourism alleviate rural poverty? Due to the difficulty of simultaneously expanding tourism while promoting pro-poor tourism, most villages traverse one of two developmental pathways: 1) ensuring an inclusive structure before expanding, or 2) expanding before building an inclusive structure. This study compares four comparable cases in Southwestern China to understand the politics behind the decision to choose different pathways, and the impact each pathways has on local residents. While the first pathway requires a careful balance to maintain a pro-poor structure as tourism volume expands, the second pathway presents apparently insurmountable barriers to poverty reduction due to the lack of political will to change the structures of successful tourism industries in ways that include the poor.

Keywords

China, Power, Pro-poor tourism, Rural development

Discipline

Asian Studies | Inequality and Stratification | Politics and Social Change | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Rural Sociology | Tourism and Travel

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Annals of Tourism Research

Volume

76

First Page

140

Last Page

152

ISSN

0160-7383

Identifier

10.1016/j.annals.2019.03.008

Publisher

Elsevier

Citation

LOR, Jean Junying, KWA, Shelly, & DONALDSON, John A..(2019). Making ethnic tourism good for the poor. Annals of Tourism Research, 76, 140-152.

Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2850

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.03.008