Making ethnic tourism good for the poor

• Main Authors: LOR, Jean Junying, KWA, Shelly, DONALDSON, John A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: China; Power; Pro-poor tourism; Rural development; Asian Studies; Inequality and Stratification; Politics and Social Change; Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration; Rural Sociology; Tourism and Travel
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2850; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4107/viewcontent/Making_ethnic_tourism_good_2019_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.