Abstract
Researchers are paying increasing attention to questions of community leadership and rural tourism development. Based on leadership theories and the literature on community leadership and tourism development, this study developed a framework for community leadership in rural tourism development and used it to examine two ancient Chinese villages. We used the longitudinal case study method to collect data, and we used textual analysis to analyze these data. The results show that the rebel leadership characteristic of confrontational actions played an important role in starting the tourism industry in both villages. However, this leadership was difficult to maintain because community leaders and residents had limited power compared to that of outsiders. Losing control of tourism development in the two villages led to banal management, which prevented the emergence of strong community leadership. In the future, we argue that resilient community leadership should be nurtured in the two villages to address more complex problems occurring in tourism development, such as those characterized by vision tensions and conflicts of interest among the stakeholders affected by tourism development. Finally, we suggest that, based on the longitudinal method, future research can focus on the relationship between resilient leadership and the resilience of tourism communities.
Highlights
Every human group such as societies, countries, and organizations requires leadership [1]
Based on the above review, we develop a framework for community leadership in rural tourism development (Figure 1) that will be used to explain the dynamics of community leadership in rural tourism development in two ancient Chinese villages
This study developed a framework for explaining community leadership in rural tourism development
Summary
Every human group such as societies, countries, and organizations requires leadership [1]. This process is a complex interaction between people (leaders and followers) and their social and organizational environments [18]. To achieve the common goal of a group, leaders and followers have to effectively interact with each other to overcome different types of problems [19,20] caused by the new realities in our dynamic, uncertain, and complex world [5]. These leadership development practices can shape the development stages of social capital in a variety of ways [21]. Examining and practicing leadership can help us better understand the issue of development, especially in rural areas [22]
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