Knowledge co-production in tourism and the process of knowledge development: Participatory action research

Abstract

Community-based tourism enterprises (CBTEs) are micro-scaled, rural and remote area-located businesses where the local community is the owner, the manager and the primary benefi ciary. Although CBTEs have prolifer-ated in less developed countries because of their potential to transform sus-tainable tourism objectives into actions, only a few CBTEs can claim to be successful (Goodwin & Santilli, 2009; Rocharungsat, 2008). Most CBTE projects experience market failure and collapse after the initial funding period (Dixey, 2008; Mielke, 2012). In studies of CBTEs, a collaborative approach is widely advocated to help CBTEs overcome their marketing challenges and shift their businesses towards long-term success (Dodds et al., 2016; Idziak et al., 2015; Mbaiwa et al., 2011). Accordingly, there is a need to develop a collaborative marketing approach to underpin stakeholder relationships in marketing co-eff orts for the business sustainability of CBTEs. The development of such an approach requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders with diff erent perspectives. To this end, collaborative forms of knowledge generation are proposed (Carr et al., 2016; Torres-Delgado & Saarimen, 2014). In particular, where subaltern viewpoints and marginalised voices are involved, these should be integrated into knowledge generation (Chambers & Buzinde, 2015). Owing to the recognition of dif-ferent forms of knowledge (Berkes, 2009), a knowledge co-production approach is appropriate to frame the development of a collaborative market-ing approach for CBTE sustainability. The knowledge co-production approach is governed by the constructivist paradigm and is facilitated in..