Stakeholders Power Structure and the Distribution of Rural Tourism Resources A Study on Sikkim

Abstract

Rural tourism is expected to preserve local resources and the community while remaining rural in scale, purpose, and location. Despite scholarly debates and significant expenditures, rural tourism initiatives nevertheless encounter challenges and often fail, particularly in emerging economies. The main reason for such failure is the absence of academic understanding relating the two essential components of rural tourism: the stakeholders and the resources. Due to this, the interaction between the spatio-temporal distribution of tourism resources (touristization and touristscape), the political climate of the destination, and its sustainability, did not receive sufficient consideration in the current scholarly discussion. By closely examining the interactions among resource distribution and stakeholders’ power-politics the current research aims to address this gap. The eight (8) sampled destinations from Sikkim, India, were selected based on recommendations from experts and visitors, they reflect the political realities of rural tourism in developing nations. At first, the impactful resources and key-role playing stakeholders of these destinations were identified and mapped as they are the main agent and focus of the above-mentioned political interplay. The internal community politics has been unveiled using Social Network Analysis (SNA), while the interrelationship among the power, its factors and resource distribution has been explored using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The current study has produced a detailed list of impactful resources and operational stakeholders around which the operational-level politics revolve. This study also outlined the characteristics of touristization and the touristscape, local politics and the consequent power structure and the distribution of tourism resources. The practitioners and policy-makers of rural tourism will find this study as a useful comprehensive reference for the ground reality of stakeholders’ politics and power structure and ways of sustainably managing it.