People-First Tourism Lab Blog

In competitive markets access to customers is often controlled by retail monopolies. In those situations, small and micro-businesses recurrently face great barriers to make their goods and services visible to potential customers. The control exerted by intermediaries is often due to customers’ lack of information about suppliers, or because of excessive complexity of supply. At its core, retail monopolies are dependent on information imbalances, and therefore, such situations can be addressed with information-based solutions that improve info flow between suppliers and their potential customers.  Recently, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created innovations that can moderate large and complex sets of product offerings and make them available to customers in efficient ways. Often, these solutions have taken the form of web marketplaces where micro-entrepreneurs can offer their services to desiring customers. It is now possible to sell exp...

An individual’s level of self-fulfillment depends not only on personal factors, but also on the strength of their support systems – social capital.  These support systems can range from people in the community to family members, and from public agencies to religious affiliations. These supportive entities are known to provide resources, information, and opportunities to individuals with vulnerable livelihoods.  However, research has also shown that community networks can promote social norms that hinder these individuals’ autonomy and self-fulfillment.   In this study, we examined the support networks of under-resourced tourism micro-entrepreneurs in select rural communities in North Carolina.  Transcripts from ten structured in-depth interviews conducted between August 2012 and March 2014 were examined using an approach in which we identified themes from studying the data.  We used a method of constant comparison between authors to arrive at a triangulated...

Tourism is highly advocated as a tool for poverty reduction in both developed and developing countries. Increased tax revenues and employment, and improved infrastructure are often cited as benefits from the growth of tourism.  However, tourism is also often criticized for cultural commodification, leakage of economic benefits, displacement of people from their original habitats, limited participation of host communities, as well as the uneven distribution of benefits.  Tourism micro-entrepreneurship is said to be a good solution to these problems – because micro-entrepreneurship creates income earning opportunities with low entry-barriers appropriate to under-resourced members of the host community.  Moreover, with their involvement in tourism, these community segments gain a place in community decision-making and exert pressure for tourism to develop in more equitable and sustainable ways. Micro-entrepreneurship is related to the definition of self-employment - perf...