Social learning communities of practice as mechanisms for sustainable tourism: a process tracing evaluation of a government intervention

• Jenny Suno Wu ^[1] ; Xavier Font ^[1] ; Pete Barbrook-Johnson ^[2]
  1. [1] University of Surrey

     University of Surrey

     Guildford District, Reino Unido

     
  2. [2] University of Oxford

     University of Oxford

     Oxford District, Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Tourism recreation research, ISSN 0250-8281, Vol. 50, Nº. 3, 2025, págs. 521-534
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Many governments introduce interventions to help small enterprises adopt more sustainable practices. We used process tracing to evaluate how and why communities of practice and socialforms of learning are key mechanisms to facilitate action-oriented sustainability learning. Wesubjected each piece of evidence to a contribution analysis, in addition to the probabilistic necessity and sufficiency, to affirm causal attribution and its strength. The study shows howlearning is contingent on the context designed. Knowledge assimilation and behaviouralchange are more likely to happen when an intervention delivers structured resource-based training that is amplified with community support and peer interactions. Setting tangibleroutines and regular interactions that allow participants to gain knowledge and best practicesthrough resource-based learning were necessary but not sufficient to promote change. Thisevaluation highlights the need to provide structured learning with tangible routines and regularinteractions with peers (i) to leverage communities of practice to create a supportive socialenvironment (ii) that introduce normative influences building a sense of peer accountability.Process tracing proved to be a useful methodology to compare the benefits of two learning approaches in the intervention, without the need for a control group.