Rural B&B entrepreneurs’ lifestyle pursuits and rural resilience

This paper explores how rural entrepreneurial activities can bring sustainable solutions to rural villages based on entrepreneurs’ lifestyle pursuits in their business activities. It further examines the relationship between lifestyle pursuits and their impacts on sustainable rural development. Scholars have discussed “lifestyle entrepreneurs” who hold rural areas’ quality of life as a priority, distinguishing these individuals from more business-oriented entrepreneurs who focus on economic profits. This study argues that all rural entrepreneurs in fact favor lifestyle pursuits to a certain extent in terms of rural businesses. In addition, different types of lifestyles shape entrepreneurs’ contributions to rural resilience. Constructivist grounded theory was applied to conduct three rounds of in-depth interviews with 28 rural bed-and-breakfast entrepreneurs in Zhejiang, China, between 2020 and 2022. The resultant framework outlines six types of lifestyles characteristic of these rural entrepreneurs. Findings indicate that “gregarious” and “hedonistic” lifestyles can optimally contribute to both rural resilience and business sustainability. • Explored the business motivations of rural B&Bs. • Examined the contributions of entrepreneurs towards the overall development of rural areas. • Differentiated between lifestyle entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs with lifestyle pursuits. • Linked entrepreneurs’ lifestyles with rural resilience, showing the impacts from the individual level to the regional level. • Constructed a theoretical framework to understand how different lifestyle pursuits in rural entrepreneurship contribute to rural resilience.