Coopetition behaviour among actors in the informal tourism economy: Studies of pedicab drivers and street vendors in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Coopetition is a concept found in the organisational, management and tourism literatures that describes simultaneous cooperation and competition with other actors. This study examines coopetition between actors in the informal tourism economy of a developing country, Indonesia. The informal economy cannot often use contracts to regulate actor behaviours and must rely on other arrangements such as trust and norms. This study explores the complexity of coopetition among actors in the informal tourism economy using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (Ostrom, 2005b; 2009b, 2010). By applying this framework, this research explores the existence of coopetition behaviours combinations of cooperative and competitive (action) situations and how these structure coopetition among the actors. This research uses a qualitative case study research design and in particular examines pedicab drivers and street vendors in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Snowball sampling was adopted to identify actors, and 47 in-depth interviews were conducted as well as naturalistic observation. Additionally, this research also analysed legal documents (local government acts and statistical reports) as well as online reports/news relating to the pedicab drivers and street vendors. Furthermore, content analysis of data supported by QSR-NVivo 9.2 was utilised to explore the data. The findings reveal that cooperative and competitive action situations occur at three levels of analysis, that is, individual, intra-union (group), and inter-union (inter-groups). These situations are influenced by personal motivation (rationality), condition of external factors (space/location of interaction and demand of service/products), rules in use (norms and/or formal regulations), as well as the characteristics of each actor (credibility). Cooperative and competitive action situations among the same actors occur sequentially in single shared resource, while actors’ interaction across shared resources may result in simultaneous cooperative and competitive situations. The findings of this research provide contributions to knowledge: first, by describing patterns of interaction between cooperative and competitive situations different from that normally described by coopetition. Here, two or more actors may interact not only in a simultaneous cooperation and competition situations but also in sequential competitive and cooperative situations or in only cooperative or competitive situations. Second, by exploring the effects of external variables on actors’ behaviours, this research provides evidence on how the individual actors quickly shift from competition to cooperation or vice versa as a response to environmental (market) uncertainties. Third, by applying IAD framework, this research also presents illustrations on how rules in use act as exogenous drivers of coopetition by defining the actors and behaviours of the actors. Here, the rules in use that may consist of norms and/or formal institutions regulate actors’ coopetitive behaviours.