Determinants of improving small tourism business performance and entrepreneurs’ quality of life: evidence from a three-year longitudinal study

ABSTRACT

This research attempts to identify the determinants and impacts of performance on small tourism entrepreneurs’ quality of life and tourism attitudes. Consistent three-year data were collected from 198, 191, and 194 small tourism entrepreneurs in Global Geopark Yuntai Mountain, China. The results found that either entrepreneur characteristics, including business skills, locus of control, autonomy, social relations, and autonomy, or enterprise characteristics, featuring innovation, management, and policy intervention, significantly contribute to entrepreneurial performance. The model also suggests that entrepreneurial performance significantly affects QOL rather than attitudes toward tourism. Implications can be applied for policymakers to promote tourism sustainability for destinations.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneur
• small tourism enterprise
• business performance
• tourism attitudes
• quality of life (QOL)
• China

Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate particular thank Professor Jigang Bao and Monitoring Centre for UNWTO Sustainable Tourism Observatories for help in filed investigation and data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education in China under Humanities and Social Sciences Grant [number 21YJCZH241], and Shanghai Pujiang Program [number 22PJC020].