Impact of family moral support on female entrepreneursinvolved in craft tourism

Abstract

The paper examined how family moral support influenced theperformance of women entrepreneurs involved in craft tourism inSouthern Africa. Relativist ontology and subjectivist epistemologywere adopted to understand the rural women entrepreneurs'experiences and perspectives. The stakeholder theory wasapplied to disaggregate the family system and identify how eachmember impacts women entrepreneurs' performance. Thefamily's structure and composition helped to explain womenentrepreneurs' resilience. Thematic content analysis was used topresent rural women entrepreneurs' narratives. Evidence from thestudy indicated that spouses and children's moral supportboosted women entrepreneurs' confidence and ability tocollaborate with other entrepreneurs. The research analysed thesocial context (family) and explained the role played by thefamily in sustaining rural women-owned craft tourism ventures.Apart from localising the tourism perspectives from rural womenentrepreneurs' perspective, the ensuing discussion puts intoperspective the emotional support mechanisms that enablewomen entrepreneurs to balance family-venture commitments.This paper contributes to the literature by examining howindividual family members' moral support impacts womenentrepreneurs' performance. It also makes a theoreticalcontribution by analysing craft tourism entrepreneurship from asociological dimension and disaggregating the family system toidentify and explain each family member's contribution to theinformal economy.ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 24 November 2021Accepted 9 August 2023KEYWORDSSouthern Africa; ruralwomen entrepreneurship;family moral support; crafttourism; stakeholder theoryIntroductionGlobally, women entrepreneurs play a critical role in rural economic growth and develop-ment, especially in developing countries (Bosworth & Wilson-Youlden, 2019; Çakmaket al., 2018). The rural economies in developing countries are driven by informal activities,making it difficult to ascertain the economic contributions of rural women entrepreneurs(Guan et al., 2019; Shehab, 2011). Nonetheless, Matandare et al. (2018) acknowledge theimportance of women entrepreneurs in improving living standards in rural communities.© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupCONTACT Godfrey Makandwa gmakandwa05@gmail.com Tourism,