Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A.A. Ghapar
Ministry of Tourism Malaysia, Putrajaya, Malaysia
N. Othman, S.A. Jamal & A.F. Amir
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: This conceptual article reviews the literature on resilience at the community level, with the
identification of key factors often found in thriving communities. The review concludes with community
participation implications and suggestions on how to obtain positive community outcomes. Individual
communities, regardless of ethnic status, differ highly in how they experience community strengths, set-
backs, and the perceived severity of risk. There is no collective list of key, effective protective and recovery
factors, but a review of recent research in the tourism and enterprise survival literature recognizes regular
and prominent attributes among resilient, dynamic communities. These factors include: (i) lifestyle values
of homestay operators and family members that motivate their participation in the tourism industry; (ii)
business age and size of homestay villages; (iii); level of social and human capital; (iv) flexibility of home-
stay community; (v) relationship with authorities; and (vi) ecological condition.
Keywords
:
Homestay, community-based tourism, community resilience, social capital, human capital
1 INTRODUCTION
only to internal challenges such as passive com-
munity and leadership problems, but also to exter-
nal challenges such as economic recession, rivalry
from other tourism products and more (Ashikin,
Kayat & Mohamed, 2010). However, in the face of
large disturbances, the aspects that deliberate resil-
ience to homestay tourism sector have not been
studied to date. Indeed, the insufficient studies on
resilience in tourism systems furnish conceptual
perspectives on the worth of the resilience concept
to understanding tourism (Farrell & Twining-Ward,
2004) and qualitative applications of the concept
to protected spans and community-based tour-
ism (Ruiz-Ballesteros, 2011; Strickland-Munro).
The contribution of this paper is to conceptually
discover the components of community resilience
of homestay tourism industry in Malaysia to any
form of change-related shocks and disturbances.
This conceptual article reviews the literature on
resilience at the community level, with the identifi-
cation of key factors often found in thriving com-
munities. The review concludes with community
participation implications and suggestions how to
obtain positive community outcomes. Inherent in
the community resilience model (Chang & Cham-
berlin, 2003) is a dual focus of building protective
and recovery factors, in addition to reducing eco-
logical risks that threaten family functioning. Sko-
vholt, Grier and Hanson (2001) have argued that an
increasingly important realm of community-based
One of the enduring mysteries of community
dynamics is why some communities continually
thrive and respond optimistically to challenges,
whereas others in similar circumstances do not cope
well. The successful coping of communities during
economic recession, disturbances, various change-
related shocks or adversity has been described as
community resilience (Mancini & Bowen, 2009;
Norris, Steven, Pfefferbaum, Wyche & Pfeffer-
baum, 2008). The concept of resilience was origi-
nally developed by studying the positive adaptation
of children under adverse circumstances (Rutter,
1987). Recently, its application has been extended
to the study of personal health resilience (Jack-
son, Firtko & Edenborough, 2007; Worthington &
Scherer, 2004), family resilience (Black & Lobo,
2008; Skovholt, Grier & Hanson, 2001; McCub-
bin, Thompson & McCubbin, 1996; Walsh, 2003),
enterprise resilience survival (Bosma, Van Praag,
Thurik & De Wit, 2004; Dunne & Hughes, 1994)
and social ecological resilience (Berkes & Jolly,
2002; Walker, Holling, Carpenter & Kinzig, 2004;
Adger et al., 2005).
In the current phenomenon of globalization,
the understanding of the resilience in the vulnera-
ble sectors of social-ecological systems is extremely
important (Kaplan, 2002). The community-based
homestay tourism sector is highly vulnerable not
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