From Spectators to Stakeholders: Community Participation as the Social Infrastructure of Tourism Destination Resilience a Structured Literature Review

This paper explores the role of community engagement in the development of tourism destination resilience in the context of the need to shift community engagement from passive to active participation, as a key social infrastructure to support the development of sustainable adaptive capacity beyond being a governance "add-on". The methodology employed involved a systematic search of the four databases (Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, Google Scholar) for literature published from 2018-25, with the results of these searches being subjected to a thematic analysis of 54 articles. Key findings suggest that the nature of participation, rather than just the structure of participation, is directly associated with resilience outcomes (measured in terms of procedural equity and institutional embeddedness) and that power imbalances, elite capture and institutional gaps are primary challenges to the participation-resilience relationship. The review includes three original contributions: (1) defining community engagement as an essential part of tourism resilience and not a tool, (2) conceptualizing Indigenous and Local Knowledge as a co-equal epistemic process and not an absolute resource, and (3) the conceptual model the "Virtuous Cycle of Participatory Resilience. Practical implications include policy guidance on inclusive governance and equity-based benefit-sharing, and social implications include improved social equity, cultural preservation and diminished tensions. Some limitations are not including non-English and grey literature and the proposed model needs to be tested empirically. Received: 21 July 2026 / Accepted: 28 October 2026 / Published: November 2026