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

Abstract

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 social forms of learning are key mechanisms to facilitate action-oriented sustainability learning. We subjected 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 how learning is contingent on the context designed. Knowledge assimilation and behavioural change are more likely to happen when an intervention delivers structured resource-based training that is amplified with community support and peer interactions. Setting tangible routines and regular interactions that allow participants to gain knowledge and best practices through resource-based learning were necessary but not sufficient to promote change. This evaluation highlights the need to provide structured learning with tangible routines and regular interactions with peers (i) to leverage communities of practice to create a supportive social environment (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.