Framing poverty: An institutional entrepreneurship approach to poverty alleviation through tourism

Tourism and poverty have been viewed as two unrelated aspects of society. However, many tourism destinations are surrounded by poor communities, and poverty itself has even become a tourist attraction. Only recently researchers have begun intensively exploring the relationship between tourism and poverty.

The demographic attributes of tourists, their values, attitudes and interests, have shifted. Increased awareness of social responsibility on the part of tourism businesses, and of social change taking place within communities have heightened new challenges in research on tourism, poverty and poverty alleviation. To date, research and empirical studies remain limited.

The aim of this study is to obtain insight into these issues from an institutional entrepreneurship perspective. It takes the significance of the individual actor by using discourse, network, opportunity and outcome approaches; taking into account the sociological institutionalism and institutional economics.

This study provides insight into the poor and other community members, tourists and tourism businesspeople through exploring the links between these various actors, poverty and tourism. This study also offers insight into structural factors. Within these actor-oriented and structural approaches, tourism, poverty and poverty alleviation can be related to one another. As such, this study contributes to the theoretical and practical enhancement of innovative institutions by introducing the Institutional-Individual Opportunity Nexus (IION) concept. The IION accounts for the association of the actor with the institutional opportunity provided by structure.