How Multi-Actor Resource Exchange Enables Sustainable Rural Tourism: Value Co-Creation in Zhushan Village, China

Rural tourism sustainability depends on economic returns, community participation, cultural continuity, and ecological stewardship. This study uses a resource exchange perspective to explain how multiple actors co-create value in rural tourism and how institutional coordination and service interaction transform resources. Drawing on more than 90 days of fieldwork in Zhushan Village, western Hunan, China, between July 2021 and July 2025, the case study uses 96 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and supplementary sources. Qualitative content analysis combined deductive and inductive procedures. The findings show that actors form exchange relationships around heterogeneous resources, including capital, land, dwellings, skills, knowledge, information, affect, reputation, and institutional support. Resource complementarity and cost–benefit assessments shape relationship formation, while reciprocity and fairness sustain cooperation. Institutional coordination stabilises resource commitment through arrangements for participation, rights, responsibilities, and benefit allocation; service interaction expands resource use through joint practice. New uses and related claims for participation and benefits then prompt institutional adjustment. Feedback between the two mechanisms connects dispersed resources in tourism operations and collaboration over public affairs, producing economic, social, cultural, emotional, and ecological value manifestations.