Bricolage or breakthrough? Entrepreneurial responses to tourism development in a regional tourism destination

Abstract

The Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) framework contributes to the study of tourism destination evolution by focusing on the various circumstances and events through which tourism destinations develop over long periods of time. Our research objective is to investigate how players in tourism destinations shape development pathways when they face stagnant or lock‐in situations. Applying the concepts of path dependence and path creation, we explain how path shaping mechanisms such as bricolage (the process of combining available resources to create innovative outcomes) and breakthrough (a process where actors attempt to generate dramatic outcomes to deviate from existing pathways) occur using two destinations in the two regencies of the Toraja region of Sulawesi, Indonesia, as a case study. Understanding cultural tourism destination pathways requires frameworks capable of interrogating ethno‐political structures and histories and assessing how they influence developmental pathways that generate regional transformations. Our investigation indicates: strong path dependence in tourism, due to cultural, political, and economic conditions, inhibits breakthrough development; that the strength of path dependence at a regional level strongly influences the path shaping processes at the firm level; and that a breakthrough developmental process in tourism does not exclude bricolage.