Relational Capital as the Institutional Stabiliser of Tourism Governance: A Policy-to-Perception Evaluation of Uttar Pradesh's Homestay Sector
Main Article Content
Abstract
Tourism policy evaluation increasingly requires evidence on whether formal governance mandates translate into experienced outcomes rather than merely into registration counts. This study examines how India's Incredible India Bed & Breakfast/Homestay Scheme is enacted across Uttar Pradesh's heterogeneous regional governance landscapes. Using a mixed-methods design, the study combines institutional analysis of 1,254 guest reviews from 23 registered homestays in five cities with a quantitative Policy-to-Perception Index (P2PI) — a novel, policy-anchored sentiment and thematic-analysis framework — applied to 517 reviews from 31 registered properties across nine cities. Findings show that uniform state policy is translated into three distinct regional institutional ecologies (Varanasi's high-friction fiduciary hubs, the standardised market hubs of Agra and Lucknow, and the corporate peri-urban nodes of Noida and Greater Noida), producing five typologies of adaptive governance configuration. The P2PI scorecard shows that guest satisfaction is significantly associated with policy-mandated safety provisions (r = .48, p = .017) and official branding (r = .59, p = .002), while the scheme's community-development mandate returns a 0.0% guest-facing mention rate — a stark asymmetric institutional fit gap. The study advances the Institutional Stabiliser Thesis: relational capital — the informal trust, fiduciary responsibility and affective labour embedded in host communities — functions as the structural glue that sustains policy functionality where formal state capacity and market mechanisms alone are insufficient. Implications for enforcement targeting, disclosure design and administrative data infrastructure are discussed
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
ACM Computing Surveys. (2023). Sentiment analysis for hotel reviews: A systematic literature review. Association for Computing Machinery. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605152
Akther, S., & Evans, J. (2024). Emerging attributes of adaptive governance in the Global South. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 12, 1102938.
Alwis, H. (2023). Money as a Social Technology: A Theoretical Analysis of Monetary Systems as Social Tools. Independent Research Paper.
Amadi, A. (2023). Integration in a mixed-method case study of construction phenomena: From data to theory. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 30(4), 1820-1842.
Andriienko, A. (2025). Quadruple Helix in policy design: Rethinking industrial revitalization in transitional economies. Three Seas Economic Journal, 6(1), 14-25.
Arora, A. (2023). Agenda 2030: India's Multidimensional Approach towards Sustainability. Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research, 5(2), 112-128.
Asheim, B. T., & Herstad, S. J. (2021). Regional innovation strategy for resilience and transformative industrial path development: Evolutionary theoretical perspectives on innovation policy. Eastern Journal of European Studies, 12(2), 25-48.
Awasthi, A., & Nain, A. (2022). Uttar Pradesh Tourism Policy 2018: How Effective and Efficient Can It Be? International Tourism and Hospitality Management, 4(1), 45-59.
Bathelt, H., & Storper, M. (2023). Related variety and regional development: A critique. Economic Geography, 99(3), 211-235.
Behr, M. M., & Nix, T. K. M. (2024). Exploring Sense of Place Through Local Tourism Actors' Embeddedness in Rural Tourism Place-Making: Insights from Local Rural Tourism Actors in Southern Sweden (Doctoral dissertation, Lund University).
Belli, L., & Jiang, M. (2023). Digital Sovereignty in the BRICS Countries (CyberBRICS Report). FGV Direito Rio.
Besley, T., Burgess, R., & Khan, A. (2022). Bureaucracy and development. Annual Review of Economics, 14, 497-524.
Binz, C., & Gong, H. (2022). Legitimation dynamics in industrial path development: New-to-the-world versus new-to-the-region industries. Regional Studies, 56(10), 1720-1734.
Bonfim, L., & Segatto, A. P. (2024). Markets Gone Hybrid: Institutional Complexity and Work Toward Market Hybridization. BAR-Brazilian Administration Review, 21(1), e230045.
Borgerud, C. (2025). The public right of access to research data—an ethical dilemma? Journal of Documentation, 81(2), 310-326.
Borowiecki, K. J., & Pedersen, M. U. (2025). Using big data to measure cultural tourism in Europe. Tourism Economics, 31(1), 88-108.
Bostancı, B., & Erdem, N. (2020). Investigating the satisfaction of citizens in municipality services using fuzzy modelling. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 69, 100714.
Buck, A. M., & Ralston, D. F. (2021). I didn't sign up for your research study: The ethics of using 'public' data. Computers and Composition, 61, 102658.
Bui, V., Alaei, A. R., Vu, H. Q., & Li, G. (2022). Revisiting tourism destination image: A holistic measurement framework using big data. Journal of Travel Research, 61(7), 1540-1758.
Calderon Gomez, D. (2021). The third digital divide and Bourdieu: Bidirectional conversion of economic, cultural, and social capital to (and from) digital capital among young people in Madrid. New Media & Society, 23(9), 2534-2553.
Caliandro, A., Gandini, A., Bainotti, L., & Anselmi, G. (2024). The Platformisation of consumer culture: A digital methods guide. University of Westminster Press.
Campbell, K. A., Orr, E., Durepos, P., Nguyen, L., & Li, L. (2021). Reflexive thematic analysis for applied qualitative health research. The Qualitative Report, 26(6), 2011-2028.
Cannon, C., Chu, E., Natekal, A., & Waaland, G. (2023). Translating and embedding equity-thinking into climate adaptation: An analysis of US cities. Regional Environmental Change, 23(2), 54.
Cardoso, R., Sobhani, A., & Meijers, E. (2022). The cities we need: Towards an urbanism guided by human needs satisfaction. Urban Studies, 59(13), 2638-2659.
Chalavadi, S. (2024). Analysing Innovative Idea of 'Make In India': India's Journey from 10th Largest to 5th Largest Economy (UWTSD Repository Paper).
Cleland, J., MacLeod, A., & Ellaway, R. H. (2021). The curious case of case study research. Medical Education, 55(1), 32-41.
Colebatch, H. K., & Castles, C. (2023). Policy as practice: Making sense of governing. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Collini, L., & Hausemer, P. (2024). Place-based pathways for the twin transition: The role of systemic change agents. Competitiveness Review, 34(3), 512-530.
Corradini, C., & Vanino, E. (2022). Path dependency, regional variety and the dynamics of new firm creation in rooted and pioneering industries. Journal of Economic Geography, 22(4), 785-809.
Cranshaw, J. (2022). Depicting Places in Information Systems: Closing the Gap between Representation and Experience (Doctoral dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University).
Datta, A. (2023). The digitalising state: Governing digitalisation-as-urbanisation in the global south. Progress in Human Geography, 47(3), 412-431.
Dewi, I. G. A. A. O. (2021). Understanding data collection methods in qualitative research: The perspective of interpretive accounting research. Journal of Tourism Economics and Policy, 1(2), 89-98.
Dhamija, A. (2021). The increasing significance of religious tourism: A case from Uttar Pradesh, India. International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, 9(3), 45-56.
Duggan, N., Ladines Azalia, J. C., & Hooijmaaijers, B. (2022). The structural power of the BRICS in multilateral development finance: A case study of the New Development Bank. International Political Sociology, 16(2), olac008.
Epstein, G., Pittman, J., Alexander, S. M., Berdej, S., Dyck, T., Kreitmair, U., … & Armitage, D. (2015). Institutional fit and the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 14, 34-40.
Fan, D., Zhang, Y., Huang, X., & Su, Y. (2023). Varieties of institutional systems, the belt-road initiative, and the patterned investment flows. International Business Review, 32(4), 102110.
Fiutowski, J. (2024). The Rising Powers and their Impact on the Global Governance (Master's thesis, Charles University).
Frey, K., Ramos, R. F., et al. (2021). Polycentric water governance in the urban global south. In Sustainability in Natural Resource Management and Land Use Policy (pp. 113–134). Springer.
Gato, M. A., Costa, P., & Cruz, A. R. (2022). Creative tourism as boosting tool for placemaking strategies in peripheral areas: Insights from Portugal. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management, 50, 256-266.
Gautam, V. K. (2023). Qualitative research approaches in social sciences. MKSES Publication.
Geddes, B. (2023). Politician's dilemma: Building state capacity in Latin America. Cambridge University Press.
Geels, F. W., & Turnheim, B. (2022). The great reconfiguration: Navigating the contested politics of system transitions. MIT Press.
Ghosh, B. K., & Batabyal, D. (2022). Measuring tourism efficiency for sustainable tourism policies: An empirical study for India. Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento, 38, 123-138.
Gim, T. H. T. (2021). Comparing happiness determinants for urban residents a partial least squares regression model. International Review for Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development, 9(2), 24-40.
Government of India, Ministry of Tourism. (2019). Guidelines for Approval and Registration of Incredible India Bed & Breakfast/ Homestay Establishments. New Delhi: Ministry of Tourism.
Government of Uttar Pradesh. (2008). Incredible India Bed & Breakfast Scheme Uttar Pradesh Guidelines (G.O. No. 1007/41-2008-4(Sa)/2008). Department of Tourism, Lucknow.
Government of Uttar Pradesh. (2018). Uttar Pradesh Tourism Policy 2018. Department of Tourism, Lucknow.
Government of Uttar Pradesh. (2022). Uttar Pradesh Tourism Policy 2022. Department of Tourism, Lucknow.
Government of Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism. (2025). Uttar Pradesh Homestay and Bed & Breakfast (B&B) Policy 2025 & Standard Operating Procedures (BB-SOP). Lucknow: DoT.
Grossi, G., Vakkuri, J., & Sargiacomo, M. (2022). Accounting, performance and accountability challenges in hybrid organisations: A value creation perspective. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 35(3), 577-597.
Guo, Y., & Li, S. (2025). Multi-level governance of low-carbon tourism in rural China: Policy evolution, implementation pathways, and socio-ecological impacts. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 13, 1204881.
Hanchard, M. (2024). Rough Guides That Anchor and the Affordances of Digital Maps. In Engaging with Digital Maps (pp. 145-168). Springer.
Hanseth, O., & Modol, J. R. (2021). The dynamics of architecture–governance configurations: An assemblage theory approach. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 22(4), 1020-1048.
Hartley, K., & Howlett, M. (2021). Policy assemblages and policy resilience: Lessons for non-design from evolutionary governance theory. Politics and Governance, 9(2), 341-352.
Hartman, S. (2023). Destination governance in times of change: A complex adaptive systems perspective to improve tourism destination development. Journal of Tourism Futures, 9(1), 88-102.
Haryono, H., Utari, W., & Damiyano, D. (2024). Evaluating the role of BRICS in shaping global economic governance: A comparative analysis of policy approaches and outcomes. The Es Journal, 5(1), 34-48.
He, S., Gong, W., & Qian, J. (2025). Unpacking the multifaceted rurality of Hong Kong's countryside: A social representation approach. Journal of Rural Studies, 114, 103589.
Hennink, M., & Kaiser, B. N. (2022). Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research: A systematic review of empirical tests. Social Science & Medicine, 292, 114523.
Hutto, C. J., & Gilbert, E. (2014). VADER: A parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text. In Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM-14), 216-225.
Ikram, M., & Kenayathulla, H. B. (2022). Out of touch: Comparing and contrasting positivism and interpretivism in social science. Journal of Research in Education and Social Sciences, 3(1), 12-28.
Invest UP. (2025). Uttar Pradesh's Bed & Breakfast & Homestay Policy 2025 Document. Invest UP, Government of Uttar Pradesh.
Jacob, M., & Bhalla, R. (2024). Exploring Inclusiveness in the Tourism Sector of Uttar Pradesh, India. ResearchGate Preprint.
Jessop, B. (2021). Adaptive Governance and the Shifting State-Market Balance. Research Paper.
Jha, K., & Gavsker, K. K. (2023). Growth profile and significance of heritage-religious tourism in eastern region, Uttar Pradesh. ResearchGate Paper.
Jordan, A., & Huitema, D. (2023). Polycentric governance. In Routledge Handbook of Environmental Politics (pp. 1-13). Routledge.
Kaplinsky, R., & Kraemer-Mbula, E. (2022). Innovation and uneven development: The challenge for low-and middle-income economies. Research Policy, 51(2), 104434.
Kelsall, T., Schulz, N., Ferguson, W. D., Vom Hau, M., Hickey, S., & Levy, B. (2022). Political settlements and development: Theory, evidence, implications (p. 272). Oxford University Press.
Khan, R. (2022). Indian tourism and hospitality, domestic tourism, GDP and tourism promotion. Indian Tourism Review, 15(2), 34-52.
Kumar, R. (2025). Make in India: Challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, 10(1), 112-128.
Kumar, Y. (2024). Achieving a $1 Trillion Economy in Uttar Pradesh: Strategies for Environmentally Sustainable and Inclusive Growth. Idealistic Journal of Advanced Research, 2(1), 45-62.
Laeni, N., Van den Brink, M. A., & Trell, E. M. (2021). Going Dutch in the Mekong Delta: A framing perspective on water policy translation. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 23(4), 512-527.
León González, C. J., Suárez Rojas, C., et al. (2025). Satisfaction and sustainability concerns in whale-watching tourism: A user-generated content model. Tourism Economics, 31(2), 201-224.
Liu, H., Lee, C., & Alden, C. (2022). The dynamics of governance and sustainable development goals in the global south. Global Policy, 13(3), 345-358.
Locke, K., Feldman, M., et al. (2022). Coding practices and iterativity: Beyond templates for analyzing qualitative data. Organizational Research Methods, 25(1), 112-138.
Lyu, Z., & Qian, J. (2025). Social and cultural geographies of economic innovation: Proliferation of meanings, articulation with user cultures, and dialectical power relations. Progress in Human Geography, 49(1), 62-83.
Mansilla, J. A., & Milano, C. (2022). Becoming centre: Tourism placemaking and space production in two neighborhoods in Barcelona. Tourism Geographies, 24(2-3), 312-334.
Marques, J. C. (2023). Grounding transnational business governance: A political-strategic perspective on government responses in the Global South. Regulation & Governance, 17(1), 145-162.
Marques, J. C., & Eberlein, B. (2021). Grounding transnational business governance. Regulation & Governance, 15(3), 889-908.
May, C. K. (2022). Complex adaptive governance systems: A framework to understand institutions, organizations, and people in socio-ecological systems. Socio-Ecological Practice Research, 4(2), 115–129.
McConnell, A. (2015). What is policy failure? A primer to help navigate the maze. Public Policy and Administration, 30(3-4), 221-242.
McGregor, N., & Coe, N. M. (2023). Hybrid governance and extraterritoriality: Understanding Singapore's state capitalism in the context of oil global production networks. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(2), 412-432.
Meena, L. (2021). Review of Sustainable Development Goals in Context to India (Agenda 2030). IJCMS Paper.
Minbaeva, D., Ledeneva, A., et al. (2023). Explaining the persistence of informal institutions: The role of informal networks. Academy of Management Perspectives, 37(2), 145-168.
Moore, M. H. (2007). Recognising public value: The challenge of measuring performance in government. In J. Wanna (Ed.), A Passion for Policy: Essays in Public Sector Reform (pp. 91-116). Canberra: ANU E-Press.
Moore, M. H. (2013). Recognizing Public Value. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nayak, N. (2023). Contesting 'Development'. Social Scientist, 51(9/10), 37-54.
Ochoa-Rico, M. S., Vergara-Romero, A., Subia, J. F. R., & del Rio, J. A. J. (2022). Study of citizen satisfaction and loyalty in the urban area of Guayaquil. PLOS ONE, 17(2), e0263567.
Olejniczak, K., & Lyubashenko, I. (2024). The last mile of policy design: The case of urban food waste intervention. Policy Design and Practice, 7(1), 45-62.
Pervin, N., & Mokhtar, M. (2022). The interpretivist research paradigm: A subjective notion of a social context. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(3), 412-425.
Portes, A. (2024). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. In New Critical Writings in Political Sociology. Routledge.
Qian, J., Liu, L., & Liu, Y. (2025). Learning to be an urban state: Urban development as state building and market making in Lhasa, Tibet. Urban Geography, 46(1), 1-27.
Qian, J., Ma, Y., & Tang, X. (2024). In the frontier zone of market transition: Economic possibilities across the market/non-market divide. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 56(6), 1710-1730.
Rahmadian, E., Feitosa, D., & Zwitter, A. (2022). A systematic literature review on the use of big data for sustainable tourism. Current Issues in Tourism, 25(18), 2930-2948.
Ray, R., et al. (2025). Conflict politics at the margins of the neoliberal state in the postcolonial context: The case anti-power grid movement of Bhangar in Kolkata. Political Geography, 116, 103012.
Saito, K., et al. (2025). Rentier capitalism, technofascism and the destruction of the common. Capital & Class, 49(1), 12-34.
Sager, F. (2022). The polity of implementation: Organizational and institutional arrangements in policy implementation. Governance, 35(4), 1021-1038.
Sheppard, E. (2025). Rentiership, rent and (beyond) capitalist futures. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 57(1), 112-128.
Siddiki, S. (2022). Adaptive governance through policy design. In M. Howlett & I. Mukherjee (Eds.), Research Handbook of Policy Design (pp. 387–404). Edward Elgar.
Suryanarayan, P. (2024). Endogenous State Capacity. Annual Review of Political Science, 27, 211-230.
Thakur, S., Sood, S., Singh, R. K., et al. (2024). Status of homestay tourism in Indian Himalayan region: Analysis of customer review and policy support for sustainable tourism. Tourism and Hospitality Management, 30(2), 189-204.
Tichenor, M., Merry, S. E., & Grek, S. (2022). Global public policy in a quantified world: Sustainable Development Goals as epistemic infrastructures. Policy and Society, 41(1), 1-15.
Truelove, Y., & Cornea, N. (2021). Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday: Perspectives from and of the global South. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(2), 231-248.
Villamizar Duarte, N., et al. (2025). The 'accessibility turn' in urban research: Contributions from Latin America and the Global South. Urban Studies, 62(3), 512-532.
Waheduzzaman, W., & Khandaker, S. (2022). Selected financial and governance factors influencing the transparency of council decisions: The case of city councils in Victoria, Australia. Cities, 125, 103620.
Waheduzzaman, W., Khandaker, S., Busulwa, R., & Pathiranage, N. W. (2025). Exploring citizen satisfaction: Balancing revenue generation and community engagement in municipal services. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 19(3), 500-517.
Wang, Z., Zhang, S., & Liu, W. (2025). When a villager is a rural homestay operator: Role expectation research using the machine learning model. Current Issues in Tourism, 28(6), 890-908.
Wen, Y., Liang, Y., & Zhu, X. (2023). Sentiment analysis of hotel online reviews using the BERT model and ERNIE model — Data from China. PLOS ONE, 18(3), e0275382.
Williams, M. J. (2021). Beyond state capacity: Bureaucratic performance, policy implementation and reform. Journal of Institutional Economics, 17(2), 233-248.
Wu, Y. (2025). Mutual accommodation: How do Chinese firms and state agencies adapt to the politics of infrastructure development in Kenya? World Development, 185, 106789.
Wyborn, C., Montana, J., & Datta, A. (2023). Conceptualising the science–policy–practice interface of adaptive governance. In C. Wyborn et al. (Eds.), Handbook on Adaptive Governance (pp. 73–90). Edward Elgar.
Yong, L. M. O., Yi, H., Low, L. L., Thumboo, J., & Lee, C. E. (2023). A policy ethnography study of a Singapore regional health system on its governance adaptations. Public Health in Practice, 5, 100345.
Zenker, S., Petersen, S., & Aholt, A. (2013). The citizen satisfaction index (CSI): Evidence for a four-basic factor model in a German sample. Cities, 31(1), 156-164.
Zhou, C., Zhang, R., Loginova, J., Sharma, V., & Zhang, Z. (2022). Institutional logic of carbon neutrality policies in China: What can we learn? Energies, 15(12), 4210