Understanding resilience in ethnic tourism communities: the experiences of Miao villages in Hunan Province, China

Abstract

Ethnic tourism is being advocated in China to assist regional development and poverty alleviation. However, the arrival of tourism developers who are largely external to local communities has led to changes in economic and governance arrangements at the local level. To understand how local communities are impacted and how they respond to and potentially recover from these changes, we examined Miao (Hmong) villages in Hunan Province, China. We consider how Chinese ethnic communities can simultaneously be vulnerable and yet still display resilience when they are exposed to tourism-induced structural changes that disempower them. We found that ethnic tourism created opportunities for knowledge sharing, which facilitated family businesses and skill enhancement. However, lack of local capital created dependence on external developers, and tourism increased the vulnerability of ethnic communities. Nevertheless, local people developed coping strategies to address the long-term economic and governance changes induced by tourism, despite also experiencing increasing disempowerment and vulnerability. We show that, even with top-down tourism governance models that are typically associated with the marginalization of local communities, everyday economic life was characterized by hybridity – simultaneous resilience and susceptibility, empowerment and disempowerment, and self-organization and dependency.

Keywords:

• Cultural tourism
• social impacts of tourism
• tourism planning
• community-based tourism
• hosts and guests
• rural tourism

Introduction

Tourism destinations worldwide are confronted with increasing environmental and social issues, which give rise to various development and management challenges (Luthe & Wyss, 2014). In China, ethnic tourism is increasingly being advocated by the various levels of government as a mechanism to enhance regional development, but this is having positive and negative impacts on many communities (Qin et al., 2011; Tian et al., 2023). Resilience appears to be a useful theoretical framework to understand how communities, and different groups of people within communities, respond to the impacts created by tourism (Bec et al., 2016; Cheer et al., 2019). Given that communities cannot control all the factors that might affect them, they need to cope with changes and build resilience through social learning and self-organizing (Berkes & Ross, 2013; Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016, 2021).

Resilience thinking is being increasingly applied in tourism research, including as a means of reflecting on the sustainability of tourism development in specific contexts (Saarinen & Gill, 2019), for assessing the impacts of tourism (Strickland-Munro et al., 2010), and for measuring the success of tourist activities (Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011). Nevertheless, there are several shortcomings in the application of resilience thinking in tourism. Firstly, although tourism destinations are often perceived as being social-ecological systems in which society and the environment are considered as coupled complex systems, this can result in excessive attention being paid to the ecological rather than to the social dimensions (Bec et al., 2016; Heslinga et al., 2017). Secondly, much scholarship has focused on short-term changes and social impacts in tourism destinations, but tourism can also lead to long-term structural change, including changes in the dominant economic activity in the region and in local governance arrangements (Bec et al., 2016; Lew et al., 2016). It is therefore imperative to investigate how resilience pertains to situations with long-term structural change (Skerratt, 2013). Thirdly, while the impacts of tourism on ethnic communities have been much discussed (McCombes et al., 2015; McCombes & Vanclay, 2022; Stoffelen & Ioannides, 2022; Tian et al., 2023), there is room for further elaboration of how these communities actually respond to tourism-induced changes and whether they can recover or prosper from these changes. This is particularly important in China, where local tourism governance tends to be influenced by outsider (non-ethnic minority) stakeholders. Farsari (2023) argued that good governance in tourism destinations enhances resilience and contributes to the sustainable development of destinations. Correspondingly, resilience should be a central component of planning and plans, especially when about improving destination governance or sustainability (Saarinen & Gill, 2019). Consequently, governance changes arising from the touristification of places can have marked but complex and mutually-constitutive effects on the resilience of ethnic host communities, in positive and negative ways.

The purpose of the paper is to consider how local communities can be simultaneously vulnerable and resilient, even when they are disempowered by the long-term structural changes (economic and governance) that are set in motion by touristification. In contrast to previous research (Tian et al., 2023), this paper discusses how the institutional arrangements within top-down tourism governance in rural China dis/empowered community stakeholders in various ways. It extends the previous research by focusing on how people construct the ability to self-organize and cope with disempowerment, in other words, how they can be simultaneously vulnerable and susceptible, and yet resilient to structural change.

We undertook qualitative case study research of ethnic tourism in Miao communities (which are also known as Hmong communities) in Hunan Province, China. The Miao ethnic group is one of the 55 ethnic minorities in China. They have their own language, culture and traditions (Henderson et al., 2009). The County Government brought in an external tourism developer to promote ethnic tourism and stimulate economic development in Fenghuang Ancient Town, a beautiful historical city. Later, adjacent Miao villages also turned to tourism, but, due to a lack of local business acumen and capital, they had to rely on external tourism companies (Tian et al., 2023). The arrival of external stakeholders and the economic development created by tourism greatly influenced local economic and governance arrangements. The reaction of the Miao people to these changes is interesting, especially in terms of understanding community resilience in a tourism context.

Tourism and community resilience

Ethnic tourism strategies and community disempowerment in rural China

Valene Smith (1977, p. 2) described ethnic tourism as something “marketed to the public in terms of the ‘quaint’ customs of indigenous and often exotic peoples.” Smith emphasized that it was tourists’ desire for exoticism that leads them to visit ethnic communities. Many others, including Butler and Hinch (2007) and Whitford and Ruhanen (2016), have also discussed how tourists are motivated by the allure of exoticness and the desire to seek ‘“exotic others.’” Thus, to attract tourists and meet their expectations, governments and tourism companies around the globe commodify and stage ethnic culture, tradition and lifestyle (MacCannell, 1976; Yang, 2011).

Ethnic tourism is recognized as being a means of economic development in rural areas (Yang & Wall, 2009). It can diversify community livelihoods, provide opportunities for earning cash, and economically empower local communities (Tao & Wall, 2009; Van den Berghe, 1992). However, although this may be the case in some destinations, most studies have shown that top-down tourism development creates an uneven distribution of benefits, with the economic and political elites capturing most of the benefits (Feng, 2008; Feng & Li, 2020; Silva & Motzer, 2015; Wang & Yotsumoto, 2019). Therefore, claims about broad-based economic empowerment and the pro-poor benefits from tourism development seem exaggerated (Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019; Stoffelen et al., 2020).

Since 1978, the Chinese government has adopted an ‘“open and ‘reform” policy, and has encouraged tourism. Before then, the largely domestic tourism served a political purpose aimed at unifying ethnic groups with the Han majority (Yang et al., 2008). Since the 1980s, the various levels of the Chinese government have held positive views regarding the developmental role of tourism in ethnic and rural areas, and have adopted ethnic tourism as a strategy to boost the local economy and alleviate poverty (Tu & Zhang, 2020). After some years of tourism development in ethnic areas, many local communities have benefited, especially in terms of improved infrastructure and transportation (Zhuang et al., 2017). However, because tourism is a development instrument advocated by government, it is mostly driven by organizations external to the ethnic villages that become tourism destinations. The limited skills and capital in ethnic communities mean that external organizations have much influence, and therefore local communities are much affected by tourism development (Feng, 2015). For the various levels of the Chinese government, economic benefits are a priority and ethnic culture is regarded as an exploitable resource (Oakes, 1998; Yang & Wall, 2009). Top-down governance dominates in many ethnic tourism areas, leading to ethnic minority groups having limited power to control how their culture is represented in tourism products or how it is marketed to the outside world (Xie, 2003). The involvement of external tourism developers can lead to uneven revenue distribution, which can result in tensions and resistance within host communities (Cornet, 2015; Wang & Yotsumoto, 2019; Yang et al., 2013). In the village-based tourism that proliferates in rural China, although community participation in decision-making is occurring, disempowerment and disengagement of community members is also widespread (Tian et al., 2023; Xu et al., 2019).

Community resilience and vulnerability in tourism contexts

Initially a concept referring to physical systems and later applied to ecology, ‘resilience’ was originally used to denote the ability of a physical system to absorb shocks and disturbance and be able to return to its original state. In a socio-ecological systems context, the concept of resilience has evolved to become more about the ability of a system to learn and transform, and adapt to change, and thus be able to ‘bounce ‘forward’’ rather than bounce back to the original state (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2021). With the concept of resilience now being frequently applied to human communities (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016; Magis, 2010; Skerratt, 2013), the field of tourism studies has also embraced resilience thinking, although initially by looking at the resilience of the tourism industry rather than of tourism communities (Liu & Pratt, 2017; Ngoc Su et al., 2021). In framing tourism destinations as socio-ecological systems, a host community and its environment and context become viewed as an intrinsically-coupled system (Calgaro et al., 2014; Heslinga et al., 2017; Pyke et al., 2018).

With this change in thinking about resilience, the key issues of ‘what’ and ‘for whom’ (Cutter, 2016; Davoudi et al., 2012; Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016) have become critical questions, especially for the sustainability of tourism (Cheer & Lew, 2017; Espiner et al., 2017). There is widespread recognition that it is necessary to move beyond focusing on the resilience of the tourism industry to also consider the resilience of communities within tourism destinations (Bec et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2020; Orchiston, 2013; Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011).

The spread of resilience thinking in tourism has led to numerous insights about how stakeholders in destinations can respond to short-term and long-term changes, contributing to an understanding of the opportunities and threats to sustainable tourism development. The existing literature highlights several factors that can foster resilience, including attitudes, agency, skills, and the ability to learn from past experiences. Knowledge-sharing, leadership, and self-organization have also been identified as crucial components of community resilience (Bec et al., 2016; Berkes & Ross, 2013; Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016, 2021; Magis, 2010). However, the fuzziness of the resilience concept has led to diverse definitions and to varying understandings of the stakeholders that need to be considered. Table 1 summarizes some of the various definitions. Following Berbés-Blázquez and Scott (2017), Imperiale and Vanclay (2016, 2021), and Magis (2010), we consider that resilience is the existence, development and utilization of community resources by community members to not only recover from external shocks (such as economic crises, political instability, or disasters), but to bounce forward and transform towards sustainability. To illustrate how resilience contributes to improved governance, Imperiale and Vanclay (2021) distinguished between community resilience (at the local level) and social resilience (at all levels of governance):

Table 1. Examples of diverse definitions of resilience.

Type of resilience	Context of application	Typical definition
Community resilience	Short-term disasters	“A system’s capacity to absorb disturbance and re-organize into a fully functioning system” (Cutter et al., 2008, p. 599).
Community resilience	Slow change	“The existence, development and engagement of community resources by community members to thrive in an environment characterized by change, uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise” (Magis, 2010, p. 401).
Socio-ecological resilience	Community-based tourism	“Resilience is a relational capacity that maintains the connection between the elements of a socio-ecological system, in spite of their possible transformation, which enables the system to be conserved as such” (Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011, p. 656).
Livelihood resilience	Social change	“the capacity of all people across generations to sustain and improve their livelihood opportunities and well-being despite environmental, economic, social and political disturbances” (Tanner et al., 2015, p. 23 as applied to tourism by Chen et al., 2020, p. 610).
Rural resilience	Impacts of rural tourism	The effectiveness of “how well a rural area can simultaneously balance its various functions over time” and “the positive adaptation of a rural area in the face of adversity and change” (Chen & Lew, 2017, p. 204).
Resilience in tourism context	Changes induced by tourism	A “quality for withstanding undesired change caused by tourism activity and the ability of the tourism system or a destination to recover from external shocks such as economic crises, political instability or natural disasters” (Berbés-Blázquez & Scott, 2017, p. 11).

(Source: compiled by the authors).

We defined community resilience as the social processes (cognitive and interactional) that occur within places and that are put into action by local people to collectively learn and transform toward enhancing community wellbeing and addressing the negative risks and impacts they perceive and experience as common problems. Social resilience refers to social learning and transformation in society that leads local communities and external actors to learn from unexpected changes (crises, disasters, and other social disturbances) and to transform toward empowering local capacities, mitigating risks and impacts, and enhancing wellbeing and resilience at all levels of social-ecological governance (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2021, p. 895).

Resilience and vulnerability are related in that vulnerability partly explains the underlying reasons why people are unable to effectively adapt to changes and develop resilience (Adger, 2006; Espiner & Becken, 2014). Vulnerability can be broadly conceptualized as the level of a system’s susceptibility to disturbance, for instance, its sensitivity or exposure to threat (Gallopín, 2006). According to Füssel (2007) and Bec et al. (2016), vulnerability stems from internal factors such as household income and limited social networks, but can also derive from external factors such as national policies (e.g. social security arrangements) and economic trends. Vulnerability can also be associated with a person’s or group’s position within a certain social system (Adger, 2006). In resilience studies, vulnerability was introduced because it explains why certain groups are more susceptible than others (Miller et al., 2010). Resilience and vulnerability are distinct but overlapping concepts in that they both consider the responses of communities, groups and individuals in terms of short-term shocks and long-term changes (Becken, 2013; Larsen et al., 2011). In essence, vulnerability refers to the marginality of people in a social system, while resilience is about a community’s ability to withstand, adapt to and learn from shocks (Espiner & Becken, 2014).

Since resilience and sustainability arguably share the same goal (Lew et al., 2016), resilience is sometimes advocated as an alternative to sustainable tourism (Lew, 2014), and potentially should be an indicator of sustainability (Magis, 2010). Because increased resilience implies greater ability to cope with vulnerability and leads to sustainability, some scholars argue that resilience should be built into governance in order to enhance sustainability (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2021; Saarinen & Gill, 2019). However, sustainable development programs do not always lead to resilience because, even though they might be promoting sustainability, they do not necessarily seek to increase resilience. Furthermore, there may be barriers to community implementation of resilience policies and actions (Lew et al., 2016). Consequently, reducing vulnerability and increasing community resilience should be implemented in destination governance to make it more adaptive (Farsari, 2023; Saarinen & Gil 2019).

Methodology

To explore people’s ability to self-organize and cope with disempowerment in response to structural economic and governance changes induced by tourism, one Ancient Town and two Miao villages in China were chosen as case studies. All three locations are in Fenghuang County of the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hunan Province (see Figure 1). This is a mountainous region located in central China, and has a relatively weak economy. The Tujia and Miao ethnic people constitute 77% of the population of the prefecture. The local county and township governments have long adopted ethnic tourism as a key tool to alleviate poverty (Yu, 2015).

Figure 1. The location of the three case areas within Hunan Province, China.

Source: the authors using open source data.

Notes: Hunan Province is shaded in the insert map of China; the minor labels are municipalities.

We used a qualitative research approach to assess how local communities respond to the changes brought about by tourism, and how, in that process, they can be simultaneously vulnerable and display resilience. We applied a multiple case study design to reveal how ethnic tourism communities, with differing institutional arrangements, reacted to changes from tourism. The fieldwork took place from January to April 2020 (at the very beginning of COVID pandemic). COVID-19 did affect the fieldwork for some of this time, however, there were sufficient weeks when it was permitted to interact with people in these communities to collect data. There were several components to the data collection for this research, including: document analysis; in-depth interviews; and participant and non-participant observation. The document analysis, which was primarily to learn about the context of the three cases, comprised a study of relevant policy documents, including the statistical yearbook, tourism development policies, planning strategies and regulations, and other tourism-related reports.

To gain a general picture of the study locations, especially in terms of population, household composition, history, tourism development process, and institutional arrangements, face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted by the lead author with community leaders and community members. Altogether, 36 people were interviewed (see Table 2), including 5 government officials at the township and county level, and 3 tourism company staff. Also, 28 residents were interviewed (8 from Fenghuang Ancient Town; 11 from Zaogang; 9 from Laojia), all of whom were involved with tourism to some extent, either operating tourism-related business (e.g. restaurant or souvenir shop) or by working as a waiter, tour guide or cleaner.

Table 2. Interview participant profile and sampling methods.

Interviewees	Representation and Distribution	Sampling Method
Residents engaged in tourism business (rely on tourism as part or whole of income)	Craftspeople; restaurant, guesthouse and souvenir shop owners; employees in tourism enterprise such as tour guide	Random sampling and informal network
Representatives of government officials (county and township level)	Tourism Bureau of Fenghuang County; Minority and Religious Affairs Committee; Tourism planners	Purposive sampling and snowball sampling
Residents’ Committee and Village Committee	The chair and other members	Purposive sampling
External developers	Managerial and ordinary staff from tourism companies	Snowball sampling

We asked the residents about their experiences and views concerning how tourism affects them and how they adapt to changes brought about by tourism. We asked the government officials and tourism company staff about their tourism development strategies and how they assist local residents in dealing with changes. The interviews lasted from 20 to 120 min. Interviewing continued until data saturation occurred, i.e. when no new information was provided by new interviewees. The interviews were conducted in Mandarin by the lead author, and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Selected extracts were translated into English for this paper by the authors. Informed consent and other principles of ethical social research (Vanclay et al., 2013) were followed, although most interviewees were reluctant to sign informed consent forms. Ethics approval was given by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, at the University of Groningen.

The lead author also undertook participant and non-participant observation to see how tourism was organized and to consider the relationships between community members and external tourism developers, committees, and the government. The lead author assisted some villagers in their tourism related businesses (e.g. retail activities) to find out how they interacted with tourists and how they coped with tourism activities. Field notes were taken during the entire observation process.

The field notes, policy documents and transcripts were thematically analyzed using NVivo-12. Our data analysis used a coding strategy for dealing with large, qualitative datasets that was designed by Stoffelen (2019). In a first coding round, we descriptively coded the interview transcripts and policy documents. Coding happened non-comparatively, resulting in a large, unstructured coding tree. In the next coding step, we re-ordered, merged and deleted codes to create more-structured and multi-level ‘pattern codes.’ Finally, we compared the pattern coding scheme with a coding tree we created from the literature review. We created a hierarchical coding tree that was used to re-code the data, leading to the results presented in Table 3.

Table 3. The two highest levels of the hierarchical coding scheme.

Themes	Second-order nodes
Long-term structural changes	Economic structure; Governance structure; Livelihood structure
Vulnerabilities	Internal lack of capital and skills; Governance gap; Weak governance; Formal institution; Top-down governance structure
Community resilience	A general positive attitude; Formal and informal leaders; Opportunities for knowledge-sharing; Families for self-organization; Enhancement of skills; Utilization of previous skills

We note that some limitations apply to our research. Apart from the fact that this research was done in one general location in a Chinese cultural and political context, it is worth noting that the tourism development was directed by an external entrepreneur with government support. Consequently, the ability of community resilience to emerge was somewhat constrained. Our fieldwork was conducted in early 2020, when COVID-19 had just started, and was having a massive impact on tourism numbers when most interviews were being done. We consider that this did not affect our results because it was at the very beginning of the pandemic, and our interviews were primarily asking about how people were affected by tourism in the recent past (i.e. before COVID). If anything, COVID was beneficial for the research because local people had more time to be interviewed. Finally, our research was of a qualitative nature, and therefore necessarily involves generalisations and a lack of specificity.

Background to the case study locations

Fenghuang Ancient Town is located within the municipality of Tuojiang Town, the political and economic centre of the county. It is a popular tourism destination, and received over 12 million visitors in 2019. Fenghuang Ancient Town contains unique Miao architecture, including stilted houses (Diaojiaolou) standing along the Tuo River. Due to its unique cultural and natural scenery, the Ancient Town was nominated as a “national historical and cultural town” in 2001 (Yu, 2015), and since 2008 has been on the tentative lists of World Heritage Sites (UNESCO, 2023). In 2001, the county government brought in the Yellow Dragon Cave Corporation (YDCC) to encourage local tourism development. YDCC paid a substantial licence fee to the county government to have the rights for 50 years to eight tourist attractions and to have a monopoly over boating on the Tuo River in the Ancient Town (Feng, 2008; Yu, 2015). Tourists have to pay CNY 148 (around USD 23) to visit the tourist attractions in the Ancient Town or to take a boat tour. With the once-off licence fee and recurring annual rates paid by YDCC, local fiscal revenue has increased markedly. With this funding, the local government has been able to refurbish the Ancient Town and protect the town’s heritage. Furthermore, YDCC has specialized in event development and marketing, which has contributed to the town becoming a famous tourism destination.

Laojia village and Zaogang village are each located about 20 kilometers west of Fenghuang Ancient Town (see Figure 1). The commercial success of Fenghuang Ancient Town enticed several large private tourism companies to begin operating in the adjacent Miao villages, centering their activities on Miao style architecture in attractive rural settings and ethnic stage performances. The activities of all these companies created much competition, which was deemed by government stakeholders to be detrimental to the overall efficiency of the tourism development process. Therefore, in 2006, the county government forcibly acquired a 51% share in each of these companies, and merged them into a joint-stock company called Ming City Tourism Corporation (MCTC) to manage tourism in the villages. MCTC charges tourists for tickets and pays CNY 8,000 (approximately USD 1237) as an annual fee to each village, a proportion of which is periodically distributed to the residents. Some villagers have been hired by MCTC to work as cleaners, tour guides, ticket salespersons, or performance actors. Other villagers have opened shops to sell products to tourists.

Laojia and Zaogang villages have faced several difficulties in benefiting from tourism. First, access to these villages was difficult, primarily because of limited public transport. Second, there was limited tourist accommodation. Tourists visiting Fenghuang Ancient Town could sign up for organized day tours to the Miao villages arranged by various tour operators, but could not otherwise easily travel to the villages, thus the main benefits from tourism went to Fenghuang not to the villages. The tourist attractions on offer in Laojia and Zaogang were largely similar, however, Laojia has received larger numbers of tourists than Zaogang, primarily because it was used by MCTC as a showcase of rural ethnic tourism.

Results

Responses to tourism-induced structural changes

It was clear that the growth of tourism in the Miao communities has diversified the livelihood activities of local people and has greatly altered local economic and governance structures. Before tourism flourished, the Miao communities had relatively weak local economies. People relied on small-scale agriculture, especially rice and livestock. Dependence on a small number of livelihood activities made people vulnerable to external shocks and decreased their resilience. With increasing tourism, economic diversification has occurred, with local people engaging in tourism activities and in the support sectors. For example, because tourists tend to buy traditional food and craft as gifts, this promoted the development of food production facilities and artisanal craft production. The backward linkages that were established have created a locally-organized tourism-driven economy (Adiyia et al., 2017).

With the large numbers of tourists arriving in Fenghuang Ancient Town, residents quickly became part of the tourism economy, especially by starting guesthouses and Miao-style restaurants. Community members who owned property in the town centre typically either rented their house to outsiders (tourists or investors), or they renovated their house to run a tourism business on their own. Many of those who did not own a house also engaged in tourism by working as waiters in restaurants or as security guards. Tourism provided a wide range of job opportunities and, as we were told by local authorities, has become the only source of income for about two thirds of residents. Arguably, tourism has substituted rather than diversified the previous economy.

In Zaogang and Laojia, tourism supplemented people’s income only to limited degree, as there were few job opportunities from tourism in those villages. Most villagers have remained partially dependent on working in the fields, even when concurrently engaging in tourism. This diversification gave villagers more options, which would be especially useful if unexpected events would occur. For example, when the government closed the village to tourism because of COVID-19, villagers were able to fall back on agriculture to maintain a living, indicating some level of resilience.

Tourism brought changes to the governance structure in Zaogang and Laojia. We were told that, in these villages, the village committee previously operated as a sort of ‘grassroots democracy,’ and communication between the village committee and villagers used to be relatively effective. However, after MCTC acquired the tourism activities, the village committee also became the conduit between MCTC and villagers. All tourism-related regulation and planning is now done by MCTC and it decides about which tourism developments to allow, often restricting local people from engaging in tourism-related enterprises. With most tourists to the villages travelling in groups arranged by travel agencies, MCTC closely liaises with those agencies, influencing their itineraries, with the consequence that local people were marginalised. Hence, although tourism diversified the local economy and reduced dependence on agriculture, it increased dependence on the external tourism developer.

In Fenghuang Ancient Town, the governance structure also changed. Several county government agencies had an oversight role, including in relation to maintenance of town facilities, tourism development, and administrative affairs, but they now do this in conjunction with YDCC. Originally, most local businesses operated independently, but with the growth of tourism, various guesthouses, restaurants and hotels established local associations to create some form of representation at the town level to organize collective action and realize bottom-up governance by acting as a coordinator between the government and the community.

Table 4 presents a summary of the characteristics of tourism and its outcomes in the three study locations. Table 5 provides an analysis of how the main stakeholders (community members, government, external developers) are positioned in relation to the key concepts discussed in this paper: vulnerability, resilience and structural changes from tourism.

Table 4. Summary of tourism characteristics and changes in the three study locations.

	Fenghuang Ancient Town	Zaogang and Laojia villages
Tourism developer	YDCC (private tourism company)	MCTC (state-owned joint stock company)
Type of tourist	Individual tourists	Organized tour groups
Institutional arrangement	Cooperation between YDCC and county government	MCTC has a monopoly over tourism activities
Structural economic changes	Diversified economic structure with tourism and other industriesDiversified livelihoods: tourism is part or full source of income	Diversified economic structure with tourism and agricultureDiversified livelihoods: tourism is only part of the income
Structural governance changes	Top-down and bottom-up governance exist simultaneouslyRegulations are made by agencies affiliated to the county government	A rigid top-down governance structure with MCTC at the topVillage committees act as the conduit between MCTC and villagersRegulations are made by MCTC
Forms of self-organization adapting to tourism	Local associationsTourism business at household level	Gatherings organized by the informal Miao embroidery leader in Laojia village Tourism business at household level

Table 5. Stakeholder positions with respect to structural change, vulnerability and resilience.

	Structural economic change	Structural governance change	Vulnerability	Resilience
Community members	Positive about economic changes and mostly accepting of negative impacts such as increasing prices caused by tourism Livelihood strategies are diversified	Some actions of external developers hinder them in further adapting to tourism Community members think the governance structure is not effective nor good for information dissemination	Villagers lack capital and skills They want the external developer to invest more in the villages They think the governance structure disempowers them to some extent	Most community members actively grasp opportunities brought by tourism There is growing awareness that they should be more self-organized More livelihood options
Government	Local industry is diversified Revenue grows significantly because of tourism	The government facilitates the central position of the external developer to enhance tourism development and promotion	The government considers that villagers can voice their opinions through the Village Committee, however, villagers think that no action is taken in response to their concerns	The government collaborates with local associations to provide courses to community members They encourage community members to participate in tourism
External developers	The developers think they offer many jobs for community members and improve local infrastructure	The developers think the Village Committee is better at communicating with villagers and prefer to liaise with villagers via the Village Committee	The developers do not realize their role in exacerbating vulnerability	The developers believe they have contributed a lot to the ethnic communities

Vulnerability in the Miao communities

Internal factors: limited capital and skills

In Zaogang and Laojia villages, tourism was fully driven by the external tourism developer; from facility construction to marketing. Villagers generally lacked the capital, skills, tourism-related business acumen, and experience needed to run tourism enterprises. As one villager stated: “If the company wants to develop the village, the village will develop well. If the company gives our village more investment and preferential policy, we can have more tourists and job opportunities.”

Due to the relatively low number of tourists in the villages and limited locally available capital, villagers tended to be unable to refurbish their houses to establish appropriate tourist accommodation. As it was impossible for tourists to stay overnight in the villages, they had to return to Fenghuang Ancient Town at the end of each day. Thus, it was difficult for villagers to utilize the opportunities that might be created by tourism. When asked about plans for more accommodation, most interviewees said that they relied on MCTC and hoped that MCTC would invest in guesthouses and/or assist them in refurbishing their houses to host tourists. The combination of top-down decision-making with limited local entrepreneurship has led to a wait-and-see attitude among local people.

In Fenghuang Ancient Town, operating a guesthouse was the most common form of tourism entrepreneurship. However, we noted generational differences in entrepreneurial zeal. Elderly people had difficulties in being competitive as a tourism host because they struggled with online booking systems, given that most tourists book rooms using online platforms. Our interviewees noted that post-visit comments greatly influence the decision-making of future tourists. As a young guesthouse owner shared: “The secret of having a good business is having good comments on the online travel platform. However, this is not easy to do since it takes time and experience.”

The internal factors contributing to vulnerability in ethnic communities included a lack of capital and business acumen. In Zaogang and Laojia, the shortage of capital among villagers resulted in a high level of dependency on the external tourism developer, hindering villagers from seizing tourism opportunities. In Fenghuang Ancient Town, some community members had strong business acumen and capacity to adapt to new arrangements, which was influenced by home ownership, availability of personal finance, and digital skills. Those who lacked these characteristics found it difficult to adapt to the changes induced by tourism.

External factors: formal institutions and top-down governance structure

The Ancient Town is under the jurisdiction of several agencies of the county government. Because of the influence of the tourism developer and county government, the town government had a very limited role in local governance, leading to disruption in communication between the county government agencies and town residents. Although the local associations have acted as intermediaries between the agencies and residents, the provision of timely information remains problematic. Illustrative of this is what happened in 2014, when continuous rain caused a major flood in the Ancient Town. Although the flood did not result in any major losses, many properties were damaged, especially those along the Tuo River that were in greatest demand as tourist accommodation. The local associations helped disseminate the news that residents who had suffered from flood damage could apply for financial assistance. However, some residents claimed in our interviews that they did not receive this message in good time.

The flooding crisis exacerbated mistrust between the local communities and government. The Tourism Bureau of Fenghuang County blamed the flood on the growth of tourism, and considered that it was caused by residents who had constructed too many buildings along the river, thus changing its hydrological characteristics. In contrast, residents believed that the government’s water management was the problem. One resident claimed:

The reason why the flood in 2014 was catastrophic was because of the government. They sold boat tickets to tourists to make money and therefore they retained water in the reservoir so that they could continue to operate their boating business. They did not discharge water from the reservoir in time, which led to the flood in the rainy season.

Poor management after the flood was also an issue for some residents, who considered that they did not receive enough emergency support from the government, in contrast to what was reported in the local and national news. According to our interviewees, the local associations tended to act as agents of the county government, and could not assist local residents in implementing any risk reduction activities. Furthermore, from the perspective of most interviewees, the county government mostly appeased the YDCC, which did not effectively engage with residents.

In Fenghuang Ancient Town, the weak links between residents, local associations, and all levels of government were exacerbated by a largely-absent town government, which led to ineffective communication between community residents and the Tourism Bureau of the Fenghuang County, which is responsible for heritage protection, streetscape, tidiness and maintenance of most facilities. Although the local associations attempted to play a role in linking the county government and community, they generally only organized collective activities when emergencies actually happened. Therefore, they were rather ineffective in reducing the vulnerability of the community in response to the gradual structural change induced by tourism.

The top-down governance structure disempowered the villagers of Zaogang and Laojia, which also contributed to their vulnerability. Villagers complained that their engagement in tourism became confined by regulations set by the MCTC. One resident said:

We cannot sell products to tourists by setting up a stall along the road because it’s not allowed by the MCTC. The managerial level thinks this will cause chaos, make the road untidy, and negatively affect tourist experiences. However, selling products is an important way for us to attract tourists and earn money, especially because our house is far from the town centre and tourists are unlikely to visit our house on their own.

Although the village committee played a role in transmitting villagers’ opinions to the MCTC, interviewees noted that, in most cases, not much changed. MCTC always had the final say over tourism-related issues, resulting in interviewees feeling that their opinions were not considered. In Zaogang and Laojia villages, most collective actions were arranged by the Village Committees. However, these Village Committees had limited finance (relative to Fenghuang Ancient Town) and could not always act on issues raised. Therefore, informal leaders were usually the main actors to respond to tourism-related changes, including negotiating with government. It was evident that the external factors contributing to vulnerability were the weak management of formal institutions, and the top-down governance structure.

Community resilience in the Miao communities

A generally positive attitude

Most interviewees perceived the impact of tourism to be generally positive, especially from a quality of life perspective. However, a few residents identified some negative impacts, even though they had an overall positive attitude about tourism. One guesthouse owner in Fenghuang Ancient Town claimed: “Although the cost of everything is increasing because of tourism, our income is also increasing. Therefore, I’m satisfied with the changes and I’m happy to adapt to them.”

Having a positive outlook is a key factor in communities being able to develop resilience (Berkes & Ross, 2013; Folke et al., 2005). Most interviewees considered that change was inevitable and accepted that tourism development also brought some negative impacts. Rather than complain and retain their original lifestyle, most interviewees actively attempted to become involved with tourism, even when this was not straightforward. Most were satisfied with their current life, partly because tourism did not require them to work away from home and separate them from their families. As one villager mentioned:

Although tourism does bring some negative impacts to our community, our life is much improved compared to before when we could only make money by farming or working in big cities. Now, I can make a living without leaving my family, which is a win-win situation for me. Regarding negative impacts, such congestion and noise, I think it’s inevitable.

Formal and informal leaders creating opportunities for knowledge sharing

In Laojia and Zaogang villages, MCTC provided courses to train their employees to provide high-quality service to tourists. Employees would acquire knowledge and skills and adapt to tourism. In Fenghuang Ancient Town, the tourism administration of the county government made a lecture hall available to the local associations for training courses. Two main courses were provided: one about operational skills such as how to improve service quality; the other about regulations and standards, including those of the tourism administration.

Leadership is a key component in resilience building processes (Folke et al., 2005; Strickland-Munro et al., 2010). Women leaders were recognized by interviewees as playing an important role in promoting women’s participation in tourism, and in facilitating opportunities to become involved in discussing and shaping change (Su et al., 2023). Embroidery was an important part of the Miao ethnic cultural heritage. Miao women used to make embroidery only for domestic purposes. When tourists started coming to the villages and showed interest in embroidered items, many Miao women started selling their craft. In Laojia Village, the wife of the Communist Party Secretary was the leader of the local Miao embroidery industry. Her family house had a good location and tourists would often visit it. She opened a large shop to sell products, and mobilized other women to produce embroidery products for sale in her shop. One Miao woman described:

Since our house is not in a good location and we are not allowed to set-up street stalls …, we can place our embroidery items in the leader’s shop and she will sell them for us. She really helps us resolve the problem concerning how to sell our products.

Although the embroidery leader organized gatherings to share experiences, she did not provide training courses for women who do not have the skills to make embroidery. It was difficult for women who can’t make embroidery to participate in tourism activities. Thus, in Laojia Village, the weaker local leadership made it more difficult for women to benefit from tourism.

Family-organized tourism enterprises

In the two villages, most businesses were organized at the household level. Considering the traditionally strong family ties in Miao communities, each family business connects family members, increases their skills and knowledge, and contributes to enhancing community resilience. Thus, the family remains the basic element of the economy. The family unit provides financial and psychological support, which helps in coping with disturbances (Larsen et al., 2011). In all case study locations, family-owned tourism businesses was the common form of adapting to the opportunities from tourism. In Zaogang and Laojia, family-owned Miao-style restaurants were common. Family members worked as cooks, waiters, cleaners and cashiers. This kind of business is self-reliant and does not require a large investment, which makes it relatively easy to adapt to tourism. However, this was less so in Fenghuang Ancient Town, where people preferred to rent their house out and to survive on the rental income.

Skills creation and utilization

In response to tourism, villagers have developed a range of skills. For instance, Miao people generally speak their own language, but in Fenghuang Ancient Town, everyone can speak fluent Mandarin as this is necessary to participate in tourism activities. By frequently communicating with tourists, most local people improved their Mandarin speaking skills. In contrast, in remote villages such as Zaogang and Laojia, only a few young people can speak Mandarin.

Before tourism increased, local job opportunities were scarce, and most people had to work away in big cities to earn income. With increasing tourism, many people have returned home and participate in tourism using the skills they acquired in the cities. For example, some villagers opened photo studios, taking photos of tourists dressed in traditional Miao costumes. It was also common for women to sell traditional Miao food to tourists by opening restaurants or establishing stalls along the streets using cooking skills learned at home. Tourism development has encouraged local people to enhance or valorize their skills and adapt to tourism. This is a manifestation of resilience in which people actively exert agency.

Discussion

By studying three ethnic tourism communities in China, we examined how community members responded to structural economic and governance changes. We found that community members exerted agency in adapting to tourism, and displayed some level of resilience. However, widespread vulnerability in terms of lack of business acumen, rigid governance structures, and poor communication between the government and ethnic communities, hindered these communities from fully adapting to and influencing tourism development. Even with the top-down tourism governance model normally associated with the marginalization of local communities, everyday economic life was characterized by hybridity, i.e. simultaneous resilience and susceptibility, empowerment and disempowerment, and self-organization and dependency.

The disempowered and vulnerability context of the two villages

In China, external developers are often brought in by the government to remote ethnic villages to professionally operate tourism in places with a weak economic structure and lack of infrastructure. However, this means that governance structures tend to become more hierarchal. If this coincides with a weakening of the local grassroots democracy, such as a diminishing of the role of the Village Committees, a rigid top-down power structure can become imposed. Although people in the three locations could exert agency to co-evolve with tourism, we observed that the strict governance of tourism was a hindrance to communities fully adapting to change. Therefore, there were missed opportunities in terms of community members benefiting from tourism.

Apart from the governance structure that was not always acting in the community’s interests, community vulnerability also stemmed from limited financial resources. For instance, people in the two villages lacked their own capital and, to benefit from tourism, they relied on the external developer and proactive local leaders. If the developer would stop investing, local people faced the risk of becoming unemployed. The villagers lacked confidence about their future, believing that only by investment from the external developer could they achieve further economic development. This finding is consistent with Xu et al. (2019), who concluded that it was difficult for small-scale and farm-based economies to fully adapt to tourism. Conversely, people in Fenghuang Ancient Town were able to develop businesses by themselves, decreasing their reliance on the external developer and making them less vulnerable. The downside was that in Fenghuang Ancient Town, people were more dependent on tourism compared to Zaogang and Laojia (where there were livelihood alternatives), making people in Fenghuang Ancient Town more vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Resilience in a context of community disempowerment

Ethnic tourism has long been promoted by governments in China to boost the economy and achieve modernization of the countryside and of ethnic communities. In the Miao communities we studied, different communities showed different levels of resilience. Instead of being passive receivers of change induced by outsiders, the Miao communities actively adapted to change. Although the disempowered situation of many community members and their limited capital contributed to their vulnerability, many developed coping strategies to deal with the structural changes induced by tourism, thus revealing their resilience.

In addition to having the capacity to respond effectively to change, resilience is also enhanced by having an appropriate attitude of positively accepting changing circumstances (Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011; Zhang et al., 2017). In the three communities, the generally positive attitude about tourism played a pivotal role in motivating local people to adapt to tourism instead of resisting change. In Fenghuang Ancient Town, a positive attitude enabled local residents to be open to interacting with tourists. This broadened their information base and options and increased their language skills, which was beneficial for their businesses (McCombes & Vanclay, 2022). Their positive attitude allowed them to embrace diversity, learn from tourists, and develop personal skills useful for tourism, which increased their resilience. In comparing the villages, we found that formal and informal leaders can assist in preparing communities to cope with changes and stimulate proactive reactions from residents (Larsen et al., 2011; Su et al., 2023).

By examining tourism development in the ethnic communities, we found that the external developer played a dual role, contributing both to the vulnerability and resilience of the communities. On the one hand, the external tourism company exacerbated the vulnerability of the Miao villages, for example by increasing their dependency on external capital. On the other hand, the company provided opportunities for local people to acquire new skills and knowledge, and to mobilize their previous skills and experiences, which strengthened their capacity to deal with changes.

Ways to achieve a higher level of resilience

Resilience can be nurtured in diverse ways (Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011). Institutions can provide opportunities for collaboration and channels for communication that can stimulate a quick response to change. Sometimes, formal institutions may be the only actor with responsibility and/or capacity to align the differing (and sometimes conflicting) stakeholders, especially in China (Xu et al., 2019). In order to build a strong and resilient community in a context of tourism development, formal institutions should realize the importance of and foster local agency, and they should provide opportunities for community members (especially marginalized people) to improve their skills to engage in tourism. This would enable community members to develop tourism more by themselves and decrease their reliance on external parties, which could be a path to sustainable development in the long term (Saarinen & Gill, 2019). To fully achieve this would require a fundamental change to the rigid top-down tourism governance arrangements that were observed in our research.

There are possibilities to enhance community resilience within the existing governance structure. In Laojia village, there was no local community organization such as in Fenghuang Ancient Town. However, a local female leader organized villagers to do embroidery, and she sold their products on their behalf. While not fundamentally altering the power position of residents within the larger tourism governance framework, these activities did assist the villagers in adapting to tourism. In this respect, the embroidery leader’s role effectively enhanced villagers’ adaptivity to tourism from the bottom-up, despite being in a relatively formal, top-down governance system. In contrast, because there were no informal leaders organizing tourism-related activities in Zaogang village, many villagers there still engaged in agriculture or worked in distant cities, rather than be involved in tourism. This suggests that bottom-up self-organization can reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience. Even without changing the formal governance system, the government can contribute to the self-organization capacity of local communities by providing training to informal leaders and by supporting voluntary community projects in remote villages where people lack capital and skills to capitalize on potential opportunities.

Conclusion

The purpose of our study of ethnic tourism in Miao villages in Hunan Province, China, was to assess how local communities can simultaneously be vulnerable and display resilience, even though they are being disempowered by long-term structural changes (economic and governance) set in motion by tourism development. In the three study locations, tourism development led to important economic changes and an institutionalization of top-down governance arrangements. Nevertheless, we found that everyday economic life was characterized by hybridity, that is, simultaneous resilience and susceptibility, empowerment and disempowerment, and self-organization and dependency. This result implies that, although tourism governance is often important to enhance community resilience and mobilize resilience to work towards sustainability in an adaptive way (Farsari, 2023; Saarinen & Gill, 2019), tourism governance and resilience are two communicating spheres. The notion that top-down governance and corresponding disempowerment of local communities by default result in the absence of community resilience is too simplistic. Hence, our paper contributes to resilience research in tourism studies by highlighting that the relations between governance, resilience and sustainability are complex, partly unpredictable, and intrinsically interwoven.

Our study showed that top-down tourism governance models do not necessarily coincide with powerlessness or the marginalization of local communities. Communities may be disempowered and vulnerable to change, but at the same time, they may also be resilient, at least to some extent. How this pans out in practice will vary according to the specific situation. Although elements of resilience may still appear, as was the case in our study, a top-down governance situation is not usually helpful (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2020). Disempowerment does restrict adaptation to external changes, and therefore transferring power to communities by having more inclusive and participatory governance arrangements would reduce vulnerability and stimulate resilience (Saarinen & Gill, 2019; Tian et al., 2023). Nevertheless, informal activities initiated at the grassroots level may assist in making the economic and governance changes induced by tourism more beneficial for local communities, even where these changes can also be disempowering in certain respects.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bei Tian

Bei Tian is a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is funded by a scholarship from the Chinese Scholarship Council. Her PhD is about enhancing community resilience in ethnic tourism destinations.

Arie Stoffelen

Dr Arie Stoffelen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is interested in: tourism and regional development; governance and planning of tourism; bordering processes and cross-border cooperation; and landscape–tourism interactions.

Frank Vanclay

Prof Frank Vanclay is Professor of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He writes primarily in the areas of: social impact assessment; the management of social issues associated with large projects; social licence to operate; business and human rights; and social aspects of project-induced displacement and resettlement. He also has a long-standing interest in the social impacts of tourism on host communities.