Empowerment and resistance: A study on the impacts of informal institutions on the interactions between tourism enterprise and rural residents

The interactions between tourism enterprises and rural residents have attracted increasing attention, but existing studies have rarely explored the influence of informal institutions on such interactions or the dynamic evolution of the roles of tourism enterprises. A systematic and nuanced theoretical and empirical elaboration on this topic remains lacking. A qualitative approach, including nonparticipant observations, semistructured interviews, and thematic analysis, was used to investigate the impacts of informal institutions on tourism enterprise–rural resident interactions and the role evolution of the enterprise during such interactions. The findings reveal dual heterogeneous effects of informal institutions on the interactions between tourism enterprise and rural residents, including the positive effects of guanxi and the negative effects of mianzi and distrust as components of informal institutions. The positive impact of such interactions is often accompanied by implicit conflicts, which local residents employ ideological confrontation and behavioral opposition to shift onto tourism enterprise. Jointly shaped by compound forces, the enterprise undergoes role overload that triggers its role entrenchment , thus transforming multiple roles into its ontological identity as a business operator and manager. Suggestions for sustainable rural tourism development are also presented.