Participatory Action Research for the assessment of Community-Based Rural Tourism: a case study of co-construction of tourism sustainability indicators in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Research about Community-Based Rural Tourism (CBRT) shows that participation of local stakeholders is a key factor in the pursuit of sustainability and supports the idea of using collaborative methods like Participatory Action Research (PAR) with local initiatives to address management and planning issues. This paper describes a case study in which tourism sustainability indicators (SIs) for a CBRT initiative were constructed through PAR with a group of women in rural Mexico. It reconstructs the steps and the process through which the indicators were established and implemented, and proposes a critical analysis of the assessment and its impacts on the group. The findings show that, provided that the SIs are adapted to the rural context, the co-construction of tourism SIs has led to assess the tourism activity using criteria adapted to the women’s needs and vision. The PAR process encouraged collective action, horizontal dialogue and made more visible the inter-relations and power relations between the stakeholders, demonstrating the potential for collaboration and empowerment in a transdisciplinary perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Community-Based Rural Tourism
• Participative Action Research
• sustainability indicators
• women empowerment
• Mexico
• transdisciplinary

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Translated from French by the authors.

2 Translated from Spanish by the authors.

3 In Mexico, national efforts have emerged to align these instruments to the local context following the recommendations of the Local Agenda 21 and the Sustainable Territorial Development Plans for tourism municipalities, whose instrument to measure and monitor the conditions of tourist destinations is the System of Sustainability Indicators. Its purpose is to combine a participatory model with contributions by local actors, arrangements for the application of indicators as well as long-term monitoring. To date it has been applied in 20 of the top tourist destinations in the country, however there is no current information about the results and whether these results are in the hands of the participants (Ibáñez & Ángeles, 2012). Still, indicators are far from contributing to the discussion of what sustainable development involves at a wider scale first of all because the information is not available to the public and, in second place, because the SIs remain focused in the ‘customer’s satisfaction’ or ‘materials used’ (id.).

4 Mujeres en Cambio seeks to improve the lives and education of women living in rural communities near San Miguel de Allende, where the volunteers, mainly retired North Americans, live.

5 In 2019, tourism (food and accommodation) represented 3.18% of the GNP of the state of Guanajuato, with more than 2 million foreign visitors. http://www.observatorioturistico.org/indicadores/dimension/economia_inclusiva

6 The Rancheritas created a webpage which presents their activities, rug hooking, the cooperative, and the Rancho Tour: http://rughookproject.com/

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by PAPIIT UNAM DGAPA [grant number IA301415].