Navigating Constraints: Applying Stones' Quadripartite Structuration Framework to Understand Rural Family Entrepreneurs and Sustainability in La Rioja

ABSTRACT Rural family enterprises (RFEs) are central to rural economies but remain comparatively overlooked in sustainability and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) research. This study examines how RFEs in La Rioja, Spain, enact sustainability and how these practices are shaped by the interaction of family values, territorial embeddedness, and institutional conditions. Using Strong Structuration Theory (SST), we analyze a mixed‐methods dataset comprising a survey of 83 RFEs and 17 semi‐structured interviews. The findings show that sustainability is frequently practiced through resource stewardship, local employment, community responsibility, and intergenerational continuity without being formalized through SDG language, certification, or impact metrics. SST explains this pattern as the outcome of interactions among external structures, internal dispositions and contextual knowledge, active agency, and resulting outcomes. The study contributes a practice‐based account of rural sustainability and suggests that policy support should recognize locally embedded practices while reducing administrative and informational barriers to formal sustainability engagement.