Coopetitive behaviours in an informal tourism economy

Abstract

In the business literature, coopetition is defined as simultaneous cooperative and competitive activities among actors. In the informal economy, norms and trust take the place of formal contracts among actors and may allow these actors to move from engaging in competition to cooperation easily suggesting that patterns of coopetition in this context might be different to that in the formal economy. This research explores coopetition among informal tourism economy actors using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework and the concept of shared resources. The results of qualitative case studies of pedicab drivers and street vendors in Yogyakarta indicate that simultaneous coopetition occurs when the actors share multiple resources while sequential coopetition occurs in the context of a single shared resource.