A Structuralist Approach to Ethnic Cultural Tourism Integration Models: Comparative Analysis of Hainan Li and Sabah Kadazan-Dusun

Abstract

Ethnic cultural tourism is now widely regarded as a vehicle for regional development and heritage conservation, yet most scholarship remains tethered to single ethnic groups within one national setting and has not adequately woven together analyses of cultural practice, institutional power, and market demand. This study puts forward a four-layer dynamic structuralist framework—spanning cultural resource, institutional governance, community agency, and market interaction structures—and deploys it in a cross-national comparison of the Li people of Hainan, China, and the Kadazan-Dusun of Sabah, Malaysia, chosen via a most different systems design on account of their sharp institutional divergence but comparable ethnic standing and heritage profiles. Fieldwork conducted in 2025 generated 74 in-depth interviews, 62 brief tourist interviews, roughly 240 pages of field notes, and 47 policy documents, all subjected to reflexive thematic analysis through parallel theory-driven and data-driven coding. Two integration models emerge from the analysis: Hainan's "state-led, market-driven" variant, marked by standardised cultural commodification, vertical policy tensions nominally dissolved through ethnic autonomy, limited community self-organisation, and one-directional demand–supply feedback; and Sabah's "polycentric negotiation, community-mediated" variant, characterised by constrained traditionalism, horizontal multi-actor contestation, stronger community agency anchored in a dedicated cultural association, and an emerging bidirectional market feedback loop. Three further findings—digital media's cross-cutting influence, a latent gender dimension, and asymmetric religious change—signal that the framework must stay open beyond its initial parameters. The study contributes by linking supply-side and demand-side perspectives, showing how ethnic politics structurally conditions both authenticity negotiation and empowerment, and furnishing comparative theoretical tools that move past single-case explanations.