Institutional Embeddedness:A Comparative Study Of Tourism Participation Of Two Rural Communities In Danxia Mountain

Community participation and resident institutional empowerment in tourism development has attracts substantive attention in the Chinese tourism arena. However, few studies have moved beyond discussing how institutions embed into community residents’ decision making process and actions in an emic perspective. Thus, the paper applies the theory of institutional embeddedness to indicate what and how institutions constrain or motivate community residents’ decision-making and corresponding actions in the process of tourist destination development. Qualitative methodology and grounded theory is applied in the case studies of two typical tourism communities in the Danxia Mountain, the only World Natural Heritage Site in Guangdong Province.The study result shows that the decision-making behaviors of community subjects are rational choices embedded into multilayer institutions, including formal institutions and informal ones. Particularly, the difference of informal institutions existing in the two communities is the principle reason in explaining the different modes of decision making in tourism participation process, which significantly affects the benefits the local residents could receive from tourism. In the case of Yaotang Village and Duanshi Village, the difference of clan culture and civil authority between the two villages is the fundamental reason. It is notable that the effective embeddedness of external formal institutions plays the key role in coordinating the relationship between heritage site development and community development when the internal informal institutions of the local community disembedded. In the last chapter, the paper provides a further discussion from the perspective of institutional empowerment and how to improve tourism legislation and destination management.Finally, the paper indicates that the theory of institutional embeddedness facilitates an in-depth analysis on the different modes and results of tourism participation of rural communities, which provides a significant insight for both the government section and the industry section to institution design for engaging community participation in tourism development.