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Abstract

This systematic literature review is designed to evaluate the current state of knowledge in rural homestays and tourism academic literature. With reference to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flowchart, we reviewed 94 studies published in the selected journals from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2020. Our review explores how sustainable rural homestays have been previously researched in terms of the context, topic, sample, method, geographical location, and theoretical framework. The review provides insights on sustainability and rural homestay tourism from the perspective of co-occurrence beside highlighting the valuable content addressed by authors and suggesting future research directions. In a sustainable rural tourism context, only 51% of the reviewed studies had considered homestay as the core and independent area of inquiry. This review notes an increasing number of researchers from developing countries are working on community-based rural homestays, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Unfortunately, important topics—like homestay branding, homestay and entrepreneurship, homestays and information and communication technology (ICT) competency, homestay operator’s training and development about sustainability—are rarely addressed in the existing literature.

Keywords

economic sustainability social sustainability environmental sustainability rural homestays community-based tourism

Introduction

In September 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a set of goals “to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda,” with each goal having detailed objectives to be completed by 2030 (UN, 2015). The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their 169 specific objectives focused on “areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet” (UN, 2015). By these SDGs, the United Nations highlighted the importance of sustainability for every country and business.

Sustainability is considered a new strategic imperative and a long-term goal for firms, nations, and society as a whole (Finke et al., 2016; Tura et al., 2019). Like other industries, tourism needs to be understood and managed with a wider context of sustainability (Higgins-desbiolles, 2018). Sustainability offers an enduring outlook that stresses commitment to moral beliefs and ethics, integrating the environmental and social uncertainties with economic objectives. Through balanced and complete tactics, the stakeholder’s roles are identified, and resources are used prudently for both present and future generations (Font & Mccabe, 2017).

Tourism firms are seen to focus merely on the economic aspect which is contradictory to the concept of the triple bottom line (TBL), which calls for an equal emphasis on all the three key areas: economic, environmental, and social (Wise, 2016). Particularly for the least developed countries, tourism may symbolize “growth without prosperity,” where the government talks about the environment but actually priority is usually given to economic development over environmental security (Ruhanen & Shakeela, 2013).

Governments are currently paying much attention to rural tourism to diversify tourism industry and play an active role in managing economic activities to increase local communities’ incomes (Chin et al., 2014; Nooripoor et al., 2020). Homestay is an attractive sustainable rural tourism product (Acharya & Halpenny, 2013; Walter et al., 2018). Unfortunately, there is no universal definition for a homestay; it is typically defined as a type of accommodation in which visitors stay in the homes of residents (Agyeiwaah, 2019; Agyeiwaah & Mensah, 2017). A homestay is a stay by a tourist, traveler, or student at a house, which is hosted by a local family in a local vicinity (Rizal et al., 2018). Homestay provides tourists with a sense of feeling at home, interaction with the host family, firsthand relationship with locals, the experience of the local culture and low-cost accommodation (Kuhzady et al., 2020; Kulshreshtha & Kulshrestha, 2019).

The homestay business is a component of the broader tourism and hospitality industry, and has the distinct features of intangibility, variability, and inseparability (Sun & Ghiselli, 2010). Homestay business encourages the rural community to get involved in the tourism industry (Samsudin & Maliki, 2015). Homestays are an intense visitor-host interaction zone (Walter et al., 2018) with threefold sustainable community-based tourism goals of environmental, cultural, and local employment protection (Reimer & Walter, 2013). A homestay program is typically carried out by individuals who own houses located in the rural areas (Bachok et al., 2018), where tourists pursuit their vacation in the cultural and traditional way of local (often rural) community living (Hanim et al., 2014). Variants of the rural homestay concept include cultural homestay, farm stay, heritage homestay, agricultural homestay, leisure homestay, cottage homestay, and so on (Hamzah, 1997). Hereafter, all variants are referred to as the rural homestays in this review.

Several systematic literature reviews (SLRs) on the sharing economy and peer-to-peer accommodation in tourism have been conducted (Prayag & Ozanne, 2018; Guttentag, 2019; Kuhzady et al., 2020). Nevertheless, an SLR on homestay and sustainability in rural setting is still lacking. In response to the growing sustainability awareness and emerging role of the homestay as a sustainable rural tourism product, this SLR sets out to explore the homestay literature from the sustainability perspective.

To contribute to this knowledge gap, capture key insights from the past studies, and identify directions for the future (Kuhzady et al., 2020), this review is well timed. Moreover, this review highlights homestay’s role in sustainable rural tourism and community development to gain long-term social, cultural, economic, and environmental benefits. This review also addresses the increasing importance of homestays as a sustainable rural tourism product.

Therefore, the objectives of this article are as follows: (a) to summarize sustainability studies in homestays from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2020; (b) to capture the research status for sustainability and homestay tourism based on the keyword co-occurrence; (c) to do content analysis of selected studies; and (d) to present future research direction.

Systematic Literature Review

An SLR, unlike traditional narrative reviews, emphasizes a systematic process for searching the literature, abstraction, and synthesis, which is reported and justified. For enlisting the included and excluded studies at different phases of review, a reporting flowchart is recommended. The reporting, traceability, and processing quality also improves by this flowchart (Yang et al., 2017). The systematic reviews can include knowledge generated through both qualitative and quantitative approaches (Pickering & Byrne, 2014). A systematic quantitative method is considered as an appropriate tool, as the review purpose is charting the homestays and sustainability research from multi- and interdisciplinary hospitality and tourism literature.

The SLR has been used in tourism studies to explore numerous themes such as tourism within a particular country such as China (Bao et al., 2018). Similarly, SLR has been used for event and volunteer tourism (Getz & Page, 2016), tourism demand (Goh & Law, 2011), tourist behavior (Bhati & Pearce, 2016; Pomfret & Bramwell, 2014), tourism attraction (Leask, 2016), and tourism risk (Yang et al., 2017). Likewise, SLR has been used in virtual reality and augmented reality (Yung & Khoo-lattimore, 2017), the use of mixed methods (Khoo-lattimore et al., 2017) sustainability communication in tourism (Tölkes, 2018), and integrated sustainability indicators for tourism (Kristjánsdóttir et al., 2017). Many researchers highlighted the importance of SLR in tourism and hospitality, but SLR in sustainability and rural community-based homestays are somehow not addressed by researchers. Therefore, our review will conduct SLR addressing homestays and sustainability.

Practical, objective, and reliable discussions and findings are provided by SLR. SLR presents a significant opportunity for scholars and practitioners to apply existing knowledge for future policymaking and research (Pahlevan-Sharif et al., 2019). This methodology is predominantly effective in plotting outfield scope (Pickering & Byrne, 2014). In the current study, five SLR steps are undertaken, which were adapted from Pickering and Byrne (2014).

In Step 1, review aims are determined, and research questions are formulated; in Step 2, review protocol is formulated by identifying search terms and databases besides drafting the literature selection criteria. Then, in Step 3, the identified databases are searched for relevant literature and then screened against selection criteria. In Step 4, all relevant information is extracted and summarized in tabular form; in Step 5, content analysis is carried out. All steps are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

SLR process.

Method

In a nutshell, this SLR explores how sustainable homestays have been previously researched in terms of the research topic, context, sample, method, geographical location, and theoretical framework. The SLR started by setting the review aims as detailed in the previous section. This literature review addressed the following research questions:

Research Question 1: What is the current state of sustainability studies in the homestay tourism sector from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2020?

Research Question 2: What is the research status for sustainability and homestay tourism from the perspective of a keyword co-occurrence?

Research Question 3: What are the important contents addressed in studies by authors?

What are the suggestions for future research directions?

Literature Review Protocol

Considering the review aims, a review protocol to direct a literature search was developed. The review protocol contained databases, search terms, and literature selection criteria. The following word schemes were used to capture studies that explored homestay from a sustainability perspective: Sustainable AND “homestays” OR “home-stays,” Sustainable AND “homestays” OR “home-stays” AND CSR, Sustainable AND “homestays” OR “home-stays” AND Economic sustainability, Sustainable AND “homestays” OR “home-stays” AND Environmental Sustainability.

To attain multidisciplinary breadth, the relevant literature was searched in tourism and hospitality’s most significant e-databases. While earlier systematic reviews mostly considered two to three databases (Yang et al., 2017), our review would consider six major databases namely SAGE (Social Science and Humanities → Marketing and Hospitality), EMERALD, ELSEVIER (Science Direct), WILEY Online Library (Business and Management), SCOPUS (Business, Management, and Accounting), and Taylor & Francis Online (Subject: Tourism, Hospitality & Events → Tourism). These six databases were commonly used in previous review studies (Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2015).

The search terms were examined in the study title, keywords, abstract, or text, and published in English language academic journals within the time frame 2010 to 2020. English is the predominant language of international academic publishing (Kristjánsdóttir et al., 2017), so in our review, this is the main reason for choosing peer-reviewed academic journals published in the English language and covering 11-year time frame.

Literature Screening

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology is used for the literature screening that formed the basis of our review (PRISMA, 2019b). The PRISMA checklist (PRISMA, 2019a) sets out the steps that should be followed to carry out a review that is replicable by other researchers and generate trustworthy data. The PRISMA methodology has been adapted for use in tourism research in several publications (Garcês et al., 2018; Stone & Duffy, 2015; Wijesinghe et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2017). Kim et al. (2018) contended that a systematic review in tourism against the PRISMA checklist would contribute to having a clearer understanding of the execution, quality, and rigor of systematic reviews. The reason behind the choice of PRISMA (Liberati et al., 2009) over other existing protocols lies on the recognition of its comprehensiveness, its use in several disciplines worldwide, and its potential to increase consistency across reviews (Pahlevan-Sharif et al., 2019).

As of December 31, 2020, the literature searched against the six databases yields 943 studies. In the first stage of the screening process, editorials, conference proceedings, book chapters, and reviews were excluded; then duplicate (overlapping) studies were removed. The remaining 423 studies were matched to the literature selection criteria. As homestays in the context of tourism were the only consideration, publications from medical/nursing-related journals, online booking, and homestays in urban settings were deemed irrelevant and discarded. A total of 200 papers were screened out in this second stage, leaving 223 studies.

In the final eligibility stage, the remaining 223 studies were carefully reviewed one by one against selection criteria. If the abstracts did not contain sufficient information, the full papers were analyzed against selection criteria. Only those studies matching the exact selection criteria were considered. During this stage, 129 studies were excluded as they were unable to meet one or more selection criteria. After these comprehensive stages, 94 studies were considered eligible and selected for the final synthesis and analysis. The screening process is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

A PRISMA flowchart for literature screening process.

Results

The results section widely explains the evolution of literature and content analysis. In the evolution of literature, journal and year of publications from 2010 to 2020 are discussed. Through content analysis, authors, journals, and research designs (subjects of studies, research methods, and geographical locations) are discussed alongside the common sustainable tourism practices.

General Overview: Evolution of the Literature

Descriptive statistics of studies reviewed were computed and presented in Figures 3 and 4. Figure 3 presents the journals that published work on rural community-based homestays related to sustainable tourism.

Figure 3.

Number of publications from 2010 to 2020.

Figure 4.

Number of publications year wise from 2010 to 2020.

Eleven papers were published in Current Issues in Tourism, having the greatest number of publications related to “sustainability and homestays,” followed by Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism with nine publications and Journal of Ecotourism in third place with seven publications. In addition to number of papers published in a journal, it is also important to know the year of publication which is shown in Figure 4. Current Issues in Tourism has 11% papers, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research has 9% papers, and Journal of Ecotourism has 7% papers.

Figure 4 shows the number of publications distributed yearly, starting from one publication in 2010; the numbers showed an upward trend, in 2011 and 2012 articles published were six and four, respectively. In 2013, the number of publications jumped to nine, in 2014 and 2015 publications slide to six. In 2016, publications stood at 14. In 2017 and 2018 it showed a downward trend to 10 and 11 publications each. In 2019, number of publications were 12 and in 2020 it stood at 15.

Content Analysis

Tables 1 to 4 show the selected papers for the content analysis in a summarized form. The following characteristics from each selected paper are summarized: (a) sustainable tourism practices examined; (b) paper author(s) and publishing year; (c) research design namely the theme of the subject, target population, geographical area of study, and research method(s) applied; and (d) theory(s) applied in study. The SLR outcomes are based on these four characteristics to facilitate an investigation on how the subject is understood and progressed over time.

Table 1.

Content Analysis of All Qualitative Studies (n = 56).

No.	Sustainable tourism practices examined	Author(s) (year), geographical area	Subject theme	Target of data collection	Theory applied
1	Homestays as potential income sources for rural communities	Bachok et al. (2018), Malaysia	The origin of homestay in Malaysia, the process of initiating, selecting the prospective owners, and accommodation. The distribution of revenue from the rental receipts.	Homestay operators	N/A
2	Tourism as an alternative livelihood to resource-dependent communities	Badola et al. (2018), India	The requirement of solid local institutions for safeguarding all sections of society with maximum benefits and minimum financial leakages	Key stakeholders	N/A
3	The ecological and cultural aspects of the visitor experience	Tiberghien et al. (2018), Kazakhstan	The geographic imaginings (nomadic cultural landscapes), crafts purchased, and performative spaces (nomadic homestays and food) are an authentic ecotourism visitor experience	Key stakeholders	N/A
4	Community-impact dimensions	Towner and Davies (2018), Indonesia	Sociocultural impacts generated by surfing tourism	Indigenous communities	Sustainable livelihood model
5	Poverty alleviation key indicators	Xu et al. (2018), China	Women tourism entrepreneurship as a multidimensional poverty alleviation tool in rural China	Homestays, farmhouse female entrepreneurs	The theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1985)
6	Homestay and host learning importance in the sustainable community-based ecotourism	Walter et al. (2018), Nepal	Community-based ecotourism as a project of sustainable community development	Homestay hosts	Theory of workplace learning (Billett, 2014)
7	Local management of ecotourism	Reimer and Walter (2013), Cambodia	Complexity in addressing environmental conservation, local livelihood, and cultural concerns of community-based ecotourism	Key stakeholders (NGOs, villagers, etc.)	Honey’s (2008) seven-part analytical framework for ecotourism
8	Community-based ecotourism (CBET)	Walter (2013), Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam	The transformative learning process promotes the sustainability aims of CBET	Key stakeholders	Mezirow’s 10 stages of transformative learning
9	Community-level ecotourism stakeholders	Palmer and Chuamuangphana (2018), Thailand	Community-based ecotourism as an economic, business development, cultural change, and sustainability tool	Local stakeholders	N/A
10	Social capital among homestay operators and host communities in Malaysia	Tavakoli et al. (2017), Malaysia	The social relationships among the homestay providers and their family members, other accommodation providers, and other members of the community not involved in the homestay business	Homestays hosts	N/A
11	Sustainable development concerns of locals related to surfing tourism	Towner and Milne (2017), Indonesia	A sustainable approach to management, marketing, and planning of the surfing tourism industry through more operative governance and active government	Key stakeholders	N/A
12	Women involvement in tourism entrepreneurship	Panta and Thapa (2017), Nepal	The requirement to highlight gender stereotypes and attitude toward women entrepreneurship and capacity building in tourism	Women entrepreneurs	N/A
13	Homestays and role of NGOs in volunteer tourism experience	Agyeiwaah and Mensah (2017), Ghana	The viability of the homestay business and volunteer tourism projects without the NGOs	Local volunteer NGOs	N/A
14	The direct-indirect inclusion of the local community in the management of homestays	Bhalla et al. (2016), Malaysia	Homestays as a community-based product to generate sustained income for locals, conserving the local cultural and natural heritage	Local communities	N/A
15	Community-based homestay program and challenges faced by participants	Kunjuraman and Hussin (2017), Malaysia	Successful ecotourism development and importance of the stake holder’s collaboration and partnership	Key stakeholders	N/A
16	Responsible tourism in the UNESCO National Park.	Tay et al. (2016), Malaysia	Exploring the definition, practices and challenges of implementing and achieving responsible tourism by tour operators and park officers in Kinabalu Park, Sabah	Tour operators, park managers	N/A
17	Community-based tourism standards (CBTS) certification criteria	Novelli et al. (2016), ASEAN region	ASEAN-CBTS’ criteria as a benchmark and strategic planning tool for local communities for improved CBT benefits, standards, and performance in the region	Industry experts	N/A
18	The surfing tourism industry and local participation	Towner (2016), Indonesia	The main obstacles in local participation in the surfing tourism industry are government support and foreign ownership	Business operators and locals	Okazaki’s community-based tourism (CBT) model
19	ICT adoption and tourism provider’s perceptions and attitude	Cheuk et al. (2017), Malaysia	ICT adoption for digital marketing and rural tourism businesses	Homestay operators	N/A
20	Homestays entrepreneurship and community nonparticipation	Sood et al. (2017), India	Sociocultural, practical, and apprehensions as mains reasons for community nonparticipation in (homestay) tourism	Local tourism providers	Typologies of levels of community participation
21	Community-based rural tourism	Blapp and Mitas (2017), Indonesia	The creative tourism potential in the community-based context of Balinese villages	Locals and tourists	N/A
22	Surfing tourism’s as a significant income and employment provider	Towner and Orams (2016), Indonesia	The development of surfing tourism and barriers to sustainable tourism development (economic leakages, pressure on the environment and resources)	Surfing tourism operators	N/A
23	Community-based tourism development	Chaudhary and Lama (2016), India	Understanding the perspective of the local communities in CBT development	Local communities	CBT development planning model Reid’s (2003)
24	Homestays as a pro-poor rural community-based ecotourism business model	Sarkar and Sinha (2015), India	Rural homestays for financial sustainability, equal distribution characteristics, and the objective of conservation of natural resources and local culture	Local communities	N/A
25	Authenticity of homestays	Mura (2015), Malaysia	Tourists’ narratives of authenticity in a Malaysian homestay experience	Bloggers	N/A
26	Tourism’s role in the rural community’s standard of living and job creation	Jaafar et al. (2013), Malaysia	The economic benefits stemming from tourism development for a local community in the area of Kinabalu National Park, Sabah	Locals.	N/A
27	Tourism as a poverty alleviation tool	Truong et al. (2014), Vietnam	The perception among community members toward local tourism, as it benefited non-poor and tour operators only	Local communities	N/A
28	Homestays as an alternative form of community-based tourism	Acharya and Halpenny (2013), Nepal	Homestays as a pro-women sustainable tourism product that fosters community development and gender equality	Local communities	N/A
29	Hosts’ relationship with commercial home	McIntosh et al. (2011), New Zealand	The significance of the intrinsic nature of interactions between identity and space within the domain of small tourism business provision	Homestay operators	N/A
30	Homestays as a cultural tourism product	Musa et al. (2010), Malaysia	The experiential aspects of homestay holidays among domestic students	Students as homestay guests	N/A
31	Importance of community-based tourism (CBT) in domestic tourism	Kontogeorgopoulos et al. (2014), Thailand	The most important determinants for successful CBT in Thailand are geographic setting, external support, and transformational leadership.	Local communities	N/A
32	Homestays as a community-based tourism product	Kontogeorgopoulos et al. (2015), Thailand	The implications of successful participation in homestay tourism in Thailand	Local communities	N/A
33	Community-based tourism (CBT)	Ellis and Sheridan (2015), Cambodia	Community benefits, sustainable, enduring, and local tourism industry can be benefited by appropriate implementation of CBT.	Local communities	N/A
34	Network relationality principles	Marques and Matos (2019), Brazil	Four key principles of network relationality in homestays are temporary belongingness; a priori empathy; technology (for face-to-face) interactions; and relational spaces.	Case study approach	Network sociality concept (Wittel, 2001)
35	Community-based ecotourism	Tran and Walter (2014), Vietnam	Women’s participation in a community-based ecotourism project in northern Vietnam	Key stakeholders	Longwe’s empowerment framework
36	Role of informal tourism entrepreneurs in tourism	Çakmak et al. (2018), Thailand	The significance of the association between informal entrepreneurs and other stakeholders	Key stakeholders	Bourdieu’s theory
37	Poverty alleviation tourism policy	Qin et al. (2019), China	The perceived benefits of and concerns about the poverty alleviation tourism policy from economic, sociocultural, and environmental perspectives	Locals	N/A
38	Economic and social impact of homestays	Kulshreshtha and Kulshreshtha (2019), India	Homestay’s impact on economic, social and cultural life	Homestay owners	N/A
39	Tourism development in Indigenous communities	Fan et al. (2020), Malaysia	Indigenous tourism	Locals	N/A
40	Studied: how technological platforms benefit local communities	Ditta-Apichai et al. (2020), Thailand	Business models of online platforms and their roles as mediators of CBT, the platforms’ contributions to the achievement of sustainable development goals	Owners	N/A
41	Agro tourism	Trinh et al. (2020), Vietnam	Farm tourism within local economic/ social/environmental context	Owners	N/A
42	Volunteer tourism	Godfrey et al. (2019), Peru	Volunteer-host interactions	Tourists	N/A
43	Community-based tourism	Ngo et al. (2019), Vietnam	The importance of acknowledging and integrating ideological and developmental alternatives to community-based tourism enterprises in less-developed countries	Stakeholders	N/A
44	Community-based tourism	Birendra (2020), Nepal	Community-based homestays and sustainable future	Homestay owners	N/A
45	Local empowerment	Marques and Matos (2019), Brazil	Network relationality in homestays	Owners and tourists	Network sociality and network relationality theoretical framework
46	Community-based agritourism (CBAT)	Bhatta and Ohe (2019), Nepal	The role of skills, training, and capacity building for CBAT development	Farmers	N/A
47	Homestay enterprise sustainability	Agyeiwaah (2020), Ghana	The recognition of sustainability as a tool for socialization have greater potential to achieve sociocultural sustainable development goals	Homestay Owners/Managers	Social cognitive theory
48	Community participation in community-based tourism projects	Junaid et al. (2020), Indonesia	CBT as sustainable development tool	Stakeholders	N/A
49	Community-based ecotourism	Phelan et al. (2020), Indonesia	The role of community-based ecotourism in the blue economy	Locals	N/A
50	Community-based ecotourism	Phelan, Ruhanen, and Mair (2020), Indonesia	Important interactions between community, the local economy, and coastal ecosystems	Locals	N/A
51	Social entrepreneurship	Dahles et al. (2019), Cambodia	Tourism-based social enterprises (TSEs) and community engagement	Stakeholders	N/A
52	Community-based tourism	Dolezal and Novelli (2020), Indonesia	Residents’ empowerment and greater inclusion for sustainable CBT development, in line with Agenda 2030	Stakeholders	N/A
53	Community-based tourism	Cornelisse (2019), Peru	Power relations between external and internal stakeholders, empowerment of community members and power issues in the authentication process of tourist attractions	Stakeholders	N/A
54	Ecotourism	Montes and Kafley (2019), Bhutan	Ecotourism as a development panacea	Stakeholders	N/A
55	Community-based ecotourism	Sen and Pierre Walter (2020), Cambodia	Three areas of transformative learning: environmental conservation, gender roles and local culture	Stakeholders	N/A
56	Community-based ecotourism	Kunjuraman (2020), Malaysia	Community-based ecotourism provided as an alternate livelihood to local communities	Stakeholders	N/A

Note. ICT = information and communication technology.

Table 2.

Content Analysis of All Quantitative Studies (n = 22).

No.	Sustainable tourism practices examined	Author(s) (year), geographical area	Subject theme	Target of data collection	Theory applied
1	Relationship of tourist’s satisfaction and perceived value in community-based homestays	Rasoolimanesh et al. (2016), Malaysia	This study investigated the perceived value and the satisfaction of tourists staying at the rural homestay.	Tourists	N/A
2	Development of socioeconomic and social capital in rural areas	Amin et al. (2013), Malaysia	The predictive determinant of quality of life amongst the homestay participant	Homestays operators	N/A
3	Community-based tourism and sustainability	Ernawati et al. (2017), Indonesia	Producer and consumer (host-guest) viewpoints on CBT products	Tourists and community members	N/A
4	Tourist’s green purchasing behavior in a rural tourism context	Chin et al. (2018), Malaysia	The significant relationship between the tourist’s green purchase behavior and three-dimensional marketing tools (eco-branding, eco-labeling and ecological ads) in rural tourism	Tourists	Theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1985)
5	Operator’s perception of socioeconomic impacts of homestays	Bhuiyan et al. (2013), Malaysia	Socioeconomic benefits from homestays can be ensured by proper planning, marketing, research, and increased customer services	Homestay operators	N/A
6	Malaysian homestay program and sociocultural factors	Meimand et al. (2017), Malaysia	Local community perception of sociocultural benefits as a function of tourism development in homestays	Homestay operators	Social exchange theory
7	Surfing tourists and local community economic links	Towner (2016), Indonesia	Pressure on local resources and sustainable tourism management issues due to the increase in foreign surf tourists	Tourists	N/A
8	Tourist satisfaction influenced by homestays facilities and services	Ogucha et al. (2015), Kenya	Tourist (homestays guest) satisfaction due to service quality level (tangible and intangible)	Tourists	Expectancy-disconfirmation theory
9	Attitudinal-behavioral dispositions of consumers toward electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM)	Rizal et al. (2018), Malaysia	User e-WOM intentions and satisfaction due to the synergy between information quality, system quality, and electronic service quality	Tourists	DeLone and McLean’s theory of information system success
10	Malaysian homestay program and sustainability criteria	Kasim et al. (2016), Malaysia	Sustainability criteria used by the operators to rate services and to promote their homestays, to attract more visitors and generate more income	Homestay operators	N/A
11	Sustainable rural tourism and local community perspective	Fong et al. (2016), Malaysia	Selected rural areas and sustainable rural tourism development	Local communities	Social cognitive theory, sustainability theory
12	Ecotourism and sustainability	Jitpakdee and Thapa (2012), Thailand	Environmental and natural resources conservation effectiveness and protection of land ownership by locals	Local communities	N/A
13	Homestay establishment brand equity and correlation with customer experience	Liu (2015), Taiwan	Ecological significance and organic farming affect homestay experiences that influence brand equity	Visitor of homestay	Customer-based brand equity (CBBE) by Keller
14	Agro-tourism impact on socioeconomic conditions in coastal villages	Shaffril et al. (2014), Malaysia	Agro-tourism improves the quality of life and economic condition of villagers. Homestays uplift the coastal villages’ image.	Local Communities	N/A
15	Local stakeholders and authorities’ social responsibilities	Ponnan (2013), Malaysia	Responsible and efficient local stakeholders for the continued improvement of rural homestay tourism as a viable economic activity	Stakeholders	N/A
16	Local tourism activities and homestays	Bhuiyan et al. (2012), Malaysia	Homestay program as a multiethnic cultural experience for tourists and as an economic tool for the local people	Homestay operators	N/A
17	Ecotourism development and homestays	Bhuiyan et al. (2011), Malaysia	Sustainable ecotourism development and homestay operation with appropriate planning and execution, operational guideline and management, proper development and financial distribution	Secondary data	N/A
18	Tourist perceived value and community-based homestay tourism	Jamal et al. (2011), Malaysia	The functional, emotional and experiential factors as important determinants of the perceived value of community-based homestay tourism	Tourists	N/A
19	Rural home commodification	Ye et al. (2018), China	Effects of commodification on perceived authenticity in commercial homes (homestays, farm stays, etc.)	Tourists and commercial homeowners	N/A
20	Economic development in rural areas by rural tourism	Lo et al. (2019), Malaysia	Sustainable rural tourism development and community support	Tourists	N/A
21	Cultural and rural attractions’ positive influence on rural homestay choice	Dey et al. (2020), India	The role of destination attractiveness and travel motivations influencing the choice of travel accommodation especially with regard to rural homestays	Tourists	N/A
22	Influence of tourists’ perceived value and demographic characteristics on the homestay industry	Zhao et al. (2020), China	Impact of demographic variables of tourists on their perceived functional, emotional, and social values via multilayered hierarchical approach	Tourists	Social stratification theory

Table 3.

Content Analysis of All Mixed Methods Studies (n = 7).

No.	Sustainable tourism practices examined	Author(s), (year), geographical area	Subject theme	Target of data collection	Theory applied
1	The tourism industry and the role of homestays	Ahmad et al. (2014), Malaysia	Motivational factors in relation to homestay entrepreneur’s decision-making and their behavior	Homestay entrepreneurs	N/A
2	Community-based tourism (CBT)	Curcija et al. (2019), Malaysia	Conflict management model as a tool to address conflicts, and to improve CBT outcome	Key stakeholders	Sustainable livelihoods approach (Wu & Pearce, 2014), social exchange theory
3	“Commercial home” as an opportunity for the growth of entrepreneurship	Jones and Guan (2010), China	The relationship between travel characteristics and demographics of tourists and the willingness to use homestays/B&B	Residents of Hong Kong	N/A
4	The small and medium accommodation business development	Jaafar (2012), Malaysia	Entrepreneurial marketing strategies develop a sustainable business model for urban and island accommodations.	Small and medium urban hotels and island chalets	N/A
5	Community’s role in homestays	Agyeiwaah (2013), Ghana	Local traditional cultures and home-like accommodation are the motivational factors underlying tourists’ choice of the homestay.	Stakeholders	N/A
6	Disadvantaged women as self-reliant homestay entrepreneurs	Kwaramba et al. (2012), South Africa	Women homestay’s entrepreneur’s concern of reduced self-confidence, diminished networking capabilities with other sectors	Women homestay operators	N/A
7	Effect of development on landscape and social environment	Pérez albert et al. (2020), Cuba	Impact of homestay tourism in social and physical term	Homestay owners	N/A

Table 4.

Content Analysis of Conceptual Papers, Reviews, and Exploratory Research (n = 9).

No.	Sustainable tourism practices examined	Author(s), (year), geographical area	Subject theme	Type	Theory applied
1	Community-based ecotourism	Regmi and Walter (2016), Nepal	Sustainable development benefits of a locally controlled and participatory form of community-based ecotourism	Conceptual paper	N/A
2	Rural tourism as an important component of the tourism industry	Nair et al. (2014), Malaysia	Limitations in current rural tourism definition in Malaysia and proposed rural tourism definition	Conceptual Paper	N/A
3	Practice-based learning in homestay hosting in CBET	Regmi and Walter (2016), Nepal	Ecotourism development and management related to hosting learning capacity and education	Conceptual paper	Billett’s model of workplace learning
4	Responsible rural tourism and contemporary innovations	Nair and Hussain (2013), Malaysia	The challenges and opportunities for responsible governance in rural tourism destinations	Literature review	N/A
5	Strengthening the linkages between tourism and agriculture	Addinsalla et al. (2016), South Pacific	The agritourism development model for linking agriculture and sustainable tourism (“homestays” and “farm tourism”) in the South Pacific	Exploratory	N/A
6	Homestay as a new rural tourism product	Zamani-Farahani (2011), Malaysia	Homestay as a combination of rural tourism, agro-farm tourism, cultural tourism, and recreation activity operated under the assistance of the government in Malaysia	Exploratory	N/A
7	Community-based tourism (CBT) as a sustainable alternative to mass tourism	Dodds et al. (2016)	CBT provides tools for empowerment, greater economic benefits, and poverty alleviation mechanism for improvements in the quality of life of locals	Exploratory	N/A
8	Heritage tourism and homestays	Munjal (2019), India	Development of homestays or heritage hotels offers a unique experience for visitors	Exploratory	N/A
9	Environment protection, community participation, and socioeconomic development of local communities	Puri et al. (2019), India	Conservation of biodiversity in the region and socioeconomic development of the locals	N/A	N/A

Sustainable tourism practices

Main sustainable tourism practices addressed by researchers are local communities and sustainable tourism development; homestays as a community-based ecotourism product (CBET); rural tourism; ecotourism and sustainability; homestays, economic sustainability and poverty alleviation; women involvement in tourism entrepreneurship; homestays and role of NGOs; and homestays as a cultural tourism product. In addition, women participation in homestays, homestays as potential income sources for rural communities, and local community participation in planning and management of tourism are also studied.

Local communities and sustainable tourism development was addressed in 28 studies; homestays as a community-based ecotourism product (CBET) in 25 studies; rural tourism, ecotourism and sustainability in 17 studies; homestays, economic sustainability, and poverty alleviation in 13 studies; sustainable development related to surfing tourism and women involvement in tourism entrepreneurship in four studies. Most studies are interdisciplinary in nature; two or more sustainable practices are often discussed in one study. Details of sustainable tourism practices studied are shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Sustainable practices studied.

Author(s) and publishing year

In total, 205 authors were involved in writing these 94 articles; 13 authors were involved in two or more publications. There are no notable researchers in this field. The articles were published in 35 different journals. Thirteen journals published three or more than three articles, nine journals published four or more than four articles, and five journals published five or more articles.

Research design

The research design consists of subject theme, target population, geographical area of study, and research method(s) applied in the study. The subject themes are primarily adopted from the study title, keywords, abstract, introduction, and literature review section. The theme mostly addressed are “the origin of homestay, conservation of biodiversity, social-cultural/economic impacts generated by community-based tourism, stake-holders’ partnerships, digital marketing in rural tourism and the role of NGOs.”

The main respondents of data collection were homestay operators, local communities, tourists, and key stakeholders. Homestay operators were selected as respondents in 21 studies, local communities in 18 studies, tourists in 15 studies, and stakeholders in 19 studies. The details of the respondents are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6.

Respondents of the study.

As for research method category, studies with qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods were included; the total number of qualitative studies were 56 (60%), quantitative studies were 22 (23%), mixed methods studies were 7 (7%), and the remaining exploratory, reviews, or conceptual papers were 10 (11%). Details of the research methods are shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7.

Research methods.

The location of data collection is referred to as a geographical area. Major chunk of studies was conducted in the Asia-Pacific region. In Malaysia, 31 (33%) studies were conducted, Indonesia 12 (13%), India 8 (9%), and Thailand 6 (6%); also other regions (n = 27, 29%) were researched, for example, Vietnam (n = 5), Ghana (n = 4), and Peru (n = 2). The geographical details of the studies are shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8.

Geographical locations of studies.

Theory(s) applied

By far most of the studies (n = 72, 76%) did not have any theory applied; the remaining (n = 22, 24%) used a theoretical framework and theories of interdisciplinary background. The predominant theories applied were the theory of planned behavior, social exchange theory, and theory of workplace learning.

Discussion

The results are summarized as follows: In a sustainable rural tourism context, 48 (51%) of the 94 studies reviewed had considered homestay as the core and independent area of inquiry. Nonetheless, the literature was selected for containing “homestays” in the title, abstract, text, and keywords. Sociocultural sustainability was addressed in 35 studies, economic sustainability directly addressed in 19 studies, and surprisingly, environmental sustainability related to rural community-based tourism or homestays was directly addressed in only six studies. Rural community-based tourism was addressed 45 times (48%) either directly or indirectly in the above-surveyed studies. Holistically sustainability was discussed in 28 studies.

We reviewed the literature systematically to identify the significant research domains of homestays as a sustainable rural tourism product by examining sustainable tourism practices, study areas, subject theme, study subjects, and theoretical contexts. This review has found that an increasing number of researchers from developing countries are working on community-based rural homestays, especially in the Asia-Pacific region that includes Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Rural tourism products have a huge potential across the Americas, Africa, and in the Caribbean (UNWTO, 2018). Rural tourism products improve livelihoods, promotes poverty alleviation, and enhances the protection of biodiversity and cultural heritage development (Haywood et al., 2020). However, an important rural tourism product—homestay—is not currently being studied by researchers in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. In articles studied, we found only four African, one Caribbean, and four South American studies. These regions have massive potential for rural tourism but somehow are ignored.

Most studies originate from Asia-Pacific region, indicating that most countries’ rural tourism policies are efficient and effective in the region, especially for rural homestays. Also, the government departments overseeing rural tourism seem competent. Asia-Pacific region is suitable for tourism throughout the year just like most countries of Africa, Caribbean, and South America; yet more tourists visit rural areas of countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Nepal compared with South American countries (Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia etc.) or African countries (Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, etc.). Perhaps the reason is better rural infrastructure, better country branding, promotion, country image, and connectivity with tourist home country. African, Caribbean, and South American countries need to improve their rural tourism infrastructure. Countries lagging in sustainable rural tourism products like homestays must also aim on expanding partnerships between national and international public and private stakeholders, as well as local rural communities.

The SLR results demonstrate that rural tourism researchers focused more on social pillar followed by economic pillar of sustainability, and environmental sustainability is not addressed as it should have been. Perhaps this is because all tourism products are perceived as environmentally sustainable; in fact, they are not. The environmental issues of tourism development require special attention (Streimikiene et al., 2021). As the development of tourism and particularly rural tourism is linked with all three dimensions of sustainability, one dimension cannot be ignored at the expense of others (UNWTO, 2018). Sustainability goal cannot be achieved by targeting a single aspect; it is essential to target all aspects simultaneously and attain the objective of long-term rural tourism development. Also, it is necessary to remind that the theoretical definition of sustainability in tourism involves economic, social, and environmental protection dimensions (UNWTO, 2018; Streimikiene et al., 2021

The outcomes of this SLR will help researchers and rural tourism managing authorities to have an easy access to publications on sustainable rural tourism, thereby contributing to narrowing the knowledge gap in sustainable rural tourism. Hence, the study can also be helpful to rural tourism researchers and practitioners.

Conclusion, Limitations, and Future Recommendations

Conclusion

A significant number of critical issues have been revealed by this review and content analysis of published literature. Branding, entrepreneurship, information and communication technology (ICT) competency, homestay operator training, and development are rarely addressed in the literature.

Rural communities especially homestay operators lack essential marketing skills especially branding skills; wide-ranging studies had linked the positive effects of CSR and sustainability with substantial performance brand equity (Wang & Sengupta, 2016). Only two articles addressed branding (eco-branding, eco-label, environmental branding, and brand experience) nevertheless homestay branding is largely ignored.

ICT is associated with innovation, productivity, internationalization, and development, and this association is proofed in all firms generally and particularly in small and medium enterprises (Giotopoulos et al., 2017). Developments in ICT provide competitive advantage and open new possibilities in rural tourism (Agyeiwaah & Mensah, 2017). Technological development can provide significant solutions for dealing with sustainable challenges of tourism development (UNWTO, 2018). In this information age, benefits of ICT competency in tourism is indisputable, but unexpectedly, only two studies addressed this critical area.

Sustainable entrepreneurs merge social and environmental concerns with economic objectives, so they are genuine models for generating social and environmental wealth (Muñoz et al., 2018). Human resource management (HRM) is one aspect of tourism firm’s effort to engage in social sustainability (Wikhamn, 2019). Having sustainable HRM practices is important for hospitality firms and their stakeholders (tourists, local communities, employees, NGOs) to project the image as socially responsible entities (Wikhamn, 2019). Besides many other important areas, entrepreneurship and HRM were somehow ignored in surveyed studies.

Moreover, the study highlights important implications for rural community-based homestays to position their tourism products strategically based on sustainability.

Limitations

This review is not without limitations as the research was limited to 11 years (January 2010 to December 2020); this period was selected due to resource constraint. A systematic review comes with its own limitations because of its retrospective, observational, and selective nature (Yang et al., 2017). Moreover, the publication language was limited to English, and all papers selected were journals and peer-reviewed papers so publication bias may be considered as a limitation. Conference papers, media articles, and other sources of gray literature were also ignored.

Despite these few limitations, this is the very first attempt to carry out a systematic review regarding sustainable homestays as a rural community-based tourism product. This review has revealed the entwined relationship between sustainable homestays and rural community-based tourism and has advanced future research direction.

Future Recommendations

SLRs can provide limited explanations to practical issues (Petticrew & Roberts, 2012; Tölkes, 2018), so future research needs to consider other review protocols to create a knowledge base that can benefit researchers and practitioners. As a commercial homestay’s business grows, it loses its authentic feel (Ye et al., 2018). So, homestay operators should fully exploit local cultural values while designing their homestays; homestay should reflect the identity and perception of an authentic rural community-based product.

In addition, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on tourism industry especially rural tourism, due to the widespread introduction of travel restrictions by countries, as well as massive and unprecedented slump in demand among travelers (Gössling et al., 2020). Tourism is considered as one of the hardest sectors hit by the COVID-19 outbreak (UNWTO, 2020). The current COVID-19 outbreak and high risk of future pandemics have given rise to new challenges for sustainable tourism development (Streimikiene et al., 2021). So, future SLRs should comprehend tourism and natural crises (pandemics).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Enhancing brand equity through sustainability tourism marketing: A study on homestays in Malaysia, Project No: IPSR/RMC/UTARRF/2019-C1/G02, Vote No:6200/G46 Faculty of Business and Finance.

ORCID iDs

Zain ul Abedin Janjua

Mobashar Rahman

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A Systematic Literature Review of Rural Homestays and Sustainability in Tourism

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Systematic Literature Review

Method

Literature Review Protocol

Literature Screening

Results

General Overview: Evolution of the Literature

Content Analysis

Sustainable tourism practices

Author(s) and publishing year

Research design

Theory(s) applied

Discussion

Conclusion, Limitations, and Future Recommendations

Conclusion

Limitations

Future Recommendations

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

References