DEVELOPING A RESILIENCE MODEL FOR DESTINATIONS: AN APPLICATION TO ECUADOR By ESTEFANIA MERCEDES BASURTO CEDEÑO A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Estefania Mercedes Basurto Cedeño To my daughter Alicia, my husband Fabio, and my mom Mercedes. Thanks for being there for me and believing in me. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my daughter, my husband, and my mother for being so supportive, understanding, patient, loving, and always giving me words of encouragement during this exciting project. In a special way, I thank my advisor Lori-Pennington-Gray for giving me her support and being willing to share her knowledge with me and guide me through all these years. I deeply thank my committee members for always being ready to help me and understand my learning process. I will always carry in my heart all those people who were willing to listen and advise me during my time at the University of Florida. I thank my friends, colleagues, members of the administrative staff, teachers, who made my experience wonderful and a pleasant memory that I will always treasure in my heart. In the same way I want to thank the Ministry of Tourism of Ecuador and the University Laica Eloy Alfaro of Manabí for their help in the implementation of this research. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... 10 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 13 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 16 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 19 Defining the Problem .............................................................................................. 19 Theoretical Background .......................................................................................... 21 The Resilience Concept ................................................................................... 21 Tourism and Resilience .................................................................................... 22 Resilience and Sustainability ............................................................................ 24 Types of Adaptation in Tourism ........................................................................ 25 A Proposed Resilience Model for Adaptation .......................................................... 25 Key Research Questions and Objectives................................................................ 28 Objective 1 Research Questions: ..................................................................... 29 Objective 2 Research Questions: ..................................................................... 29 Context and Delimitation ......................................................................................... 29 The Geographical Context of the Study ........................................................... 30 Definitions and Delimitations for the Study ....................................................... 32 Environmental assets ................................................................................. 32 Socio-cultural assets .................................................................................. 33 Key stakeholders ....................................................................................... 34 Risk and vulnerability ................................................................................. 34 Resilience .................................................................................................. 35 Risk and Vulnerabilities in Ecuador .................................................................. 35 Significance of the Study .................................................................................. 37 Dissertation Format .......................................................................................... 37 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................... 44 Resilience Theory ................................................................................................... 45 Describing the System ............................................................................................ 48 Resilience of What to What? ............................................................................ 48 Desirability of the System, Identifying Key Issues ............................................ 50 Multiple Space and Time Scales ...................................................................... 50 Different Approaches to Achieve Resilience ........................................................... 51 5 Engineering ...................................................................................................... 51 Ecological ......................................................................................................... 51 Social Ecological System (SES) Resilience ..................................................... 52 Evolutionary Resilience .................................................................................... 55 Community Resilience ...................................................................................... 56 Resilience in the Tourism Field ............................................................................... 59 Enterprise Resilience ....................................................................................... 59 Tourism Community Resilience ........................................................................ 61 Resilience in Tourism an Emerging Approach .................................................. 62 Resilience Research Organizations ................................................................. 68 Resilient organizations ............................................................................... 69 Resilience alliance ..................................................................................... 70 Stockholm resilience centre ....................................................................... 70 The Regional Tourism Adaptation Framework RTAF ....................................... 71 Gaps in the Knowledge ........................................................................................... 73 3 METHODS .............................................................................................................. 76 Study Site ............................................................................................................... 77 Research Design Foundation ................................................................................. 80 Phase 1: Adaptation of the RTAF Model................................................................. 81 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 82 Rationale .......................................................................................................... 82 Data Collection ................................................................................................. 84 Document Analysis ........................................................................................... 85 Skimming stage ......................................................................................... 86 Review/ reading stage ............................................................................... 87 Interpretation stage .................................................................................... 87 Data Analysis ................................................................................................... 88 Identifying and labeling codes .................................................................... 89 Document and verifying ............................................................................. 90 Comparing and contrasting ........................................................................ 90 Validity and Reliability ...................................................................................... 90 Phase 2: Risk and Vulnerability Assessment .......................................................... 91 Step 1: Document Analysis Process Risk Assessment........................................... 93 Rationale .......................................................................................................... 93 Data Collection ................................................................................................. 94 Documents ....................................................................................................... 95 Document Analysis ........................................................................................... 96 Skimming stage ......................................................................................... 96 Review / reading stage .............................................................................. 96 Interpretation stage ...................................................................................