Evaluation of tourism-based social interventions using the methodological approach of Realistic Evaluation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25145/j.pasos.2018.16.036Keywords:
Poverty alleviation, Tourism as a social intervention, Social interventions for sustainable development based on tourism (IDSTs), Realistic evaluation of social interventions, Evaluation based on theory, Theory of change.Abstract
The growth and expansion of tourism worldwide has made the activity a relevant element in developing countries’ economies with important cultural and natural features forming valuable tourist assets. The combination of these elements has led to the incorporation of tourism into the international agenda as a tool for development and combating poverty. As a result, particularly since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been an increase in the application of social interventions based on tourism with the aim of generating sustainable development in marginalized communities in the world. However, the relationship between poverty alleviation and tourism has not yet been established. And the information available indicates a high rate of failure in these projects. So far, on the one hand, academic analysis of these projects is generally based on concepts such as pro-poor tourism and community-based tourism, and has therefore focused on project performance and indirect benefit relative to the receiving communities, and on the other, the few evaluations of these interventions are extremely scarce, difficult to access and do not seek to explain the mechanisms triggered in the contexts in which they are applied, their operational processes or the impacts they generate. To fill this gap, we propose a realistic evaluation of an intervention for sustainable development-based tourism (IDST) to generate a comprehensive picture of it. This methodological approach has been developed to link theories held by the groups involved with the contexts in which the interventions are carried out and demonstrate the mechanisms used that generate the results of the intervention. This article presents the case of the ‘Modelo’ Field Station in Sta. Cruz Tepetotutla, in the region of Chinanteca, in Oaxaca, Mexico, to provide a first proposal for a conceptual framework as a guide for the application of this methodological approach in the evaluation of social interventions for the sustainable development of tourism recipient/beneficiary communities.
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