Negotiating Heritage Value in Urban Kampung Tourism: A Qualitative Study of Participatory Governance and Stakeholder Communication in Surabaya-Indonesia

ABSTRACT: Background: Urban heritage tourism raises fundamental questions about how communities participate in the governance of culturally significant sites and how social sustainability is negotiated among diverse stakeholders. In Indonesia, kampung-based heritage areas present distinctive challenges because governance is shaped by informal social networks, musyawarah (deliberative consultation), gotong royong (mutual cooperation), and uneven institutional capacity rather than by formalized management structures alone. Participatory governance theory suggests that inclusive, multi-stakeholder engagement strengthens sustainability outcomes, yet few empirical studies have examined how such participation operates in resource-constrained Indonesian urban heritage settings. Drawing on UNESCO’s strategic communication framework for heritage tourism and informed by participatory development and stakeholder collaboration theories, this study investigates community engagement processes in Kampung Peneleh, Surabaya, an area comprising multiple historically significant nodes managed through fragmented institutional arrangements. The primary objective is to examine how heritage value is collectively articulated, how different community and visitor groups are engaged, and how conservation and development goals are negotiated in a kampung-based heritage setting. Methods: A qualitative research design was employed, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten participants comprising five heritage site organizers and five visitors. Data were collected between July and October 2025 in Kampung Peneleh, Surabaya, and analyzed through thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase procedure. The analysis combined deductive coding derived from UNESCO’s communication dimensions with inductive coding emerging from field data. Findings: Four interconnected findings emerged. First, heritage value articulation remained fragmented across sites, reflecting a deficit in participatory meaning-making. Second, stakeholder coordination was dominated by informal, relationship-based networks, particularly WhatsApp-mediated exchanges and musyawarah practices, which supported flexibility but also generated exclusion and uneven participation. Third, organizers demonstrated limited capacity for differentiating among visitor and community groups, resulting in undifferentiated engagement despite the presence of distinct domestic, international, educational, pilgrimage, and local audiences. Fourth, preservation-oriented discourse was substantially stronger than communication about community economic benefits, creating tension between conservation success and inclusive local development. These findings indicate that the UNESCO framework remains analytically useful but cannot be applied mechanically in resource-constrained kampung contexts. Conclusion: Effective heritage tourism governance in urban kampung settings requires culturally adapted participatory mechanisms, including staged capacity building, hybrid formal-informal coordination, and transparent linkage between conservation work and community benefit. International frameworks are most productive when translated into locally resonant practices rather than adopted as fixed managerial templates. Novelty/Originality of this article: This article contributes an empirically grounded community engagement perspective to Indonesian heritage tourism scholarship by demonstrating how UNESCO’s strategic communication framework must be contextualized for high-context, informal, and resource-limited urban kampung settings. It also offers a staged participatory adaptation pathway for heritage stakeholders seeking to improve coordination, narrative coherence, and sustainable tourism outcomes. Keywords: community engagement; heritage tourism; participatory governance; Surabaya; urban heritage.