Does governance matter? Social pathways from reciprocity to sustainable tourism in rural Java, Indonesia

Research on rural tourism often treats social capital as a composite, leaving the behavioural mechanism of reciprocity underexplored. We surveyed 610 residents across two Indonesian tourism villages—community-driven Karangrejo (n = 360) and commercially oriented Ponggok (n = 250)—and used multi-group structural equation modelling to examine whether (1) reciprocity relates to higher adaptive capacity and (2) adaptive capacity relates to better sustainable-tourism outcomes. In both villages, these relationships held, and they were stronger in Karangrejo than in Ponggok, indicating that governance context shapes how reciprocity is translated into adaptive practices. By distinguishing adaptive capacity (capabilities to anticipate, learn, and adjust) from resilience (system performance under disturbance), the study clarifies pathways from everyday reciprocal exchange to sustainability outcomes. Policy-wise, we recommend that village governments and BUMDes (Badan Usaha Milik Desa/Village Owned Enterprise) institutionalise reciprocity-building(e.g. collective-labour credits/time-banking) and pair them with capacity-building programmes and matched grants to scale adaptive practices, especially in commercially managed destinations. Future longitudinal work should track how these pathways evolve through shocks and across a wider set of rural sites.