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This chapter challenges the urban bias in studies on the middle class in India and underlines the need to focus on the significant role rural middle class plays in economic diversification. Given that more than 23% of the upper middle class are located in rural India, it is surprising to note that their contribution in supporting experience economy remains under-researched. Thus, this chapter fills a key gap in existing studies on rural tourism in India by underlining how rural middle-class has triggered a huge demand for travel within the country itself for rural cultural programmes and different schemes to promote rural heritage sights.

The present study is aimed at understanding the survival strategies of Subsistence-type Rural Independent retailers, henceforth called SRIs, in the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) markets of developing economies through a qualitative study. SRIs constitute a pivotal channel of distribution of goods to BoP consumers living in the rural areas of developing economies. A process of long interviews was chosen for data gathering to allow SRIs to go into details to allow them to expound upon their beliefs, life-situations, and societal norms. Narratives were collected verbatim from SRIs. The concept of socio-economic embeddedness is used as the central concept to interpret and connect the elements, discerned from the narratives, into a conceptual framework. The aforesaid theory combines the neo-classical economic concept of utility maximization with behavioral economics and economic sociology. The analysis of the narratives is interpretive against the identified elements of the concept of economic embeddedness. The survival strategies of SRIs seem to stem from sociological, psychological, and utility-maximizing behaviors. The elements of SRIs’ responses to its environment provide valuable insights into their purchase motivations.

This chapter aims to analyse the evolution of competing paradigms and theoretical frameworks that have pervaded the debates on the present and future of agricultural and food systems and their associated rural areas. From this global overview, we will extract common features of paradigms that are being reproduced over time as well as highlight the innovations introduced. Particular attention will be paid to discuss the responses and contributions inspired by European Mediterranean-based research, setting up the framework that underlines the subsequent chapters of the volume.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

This chapter investigates diverse policy experiences of smart village strategy in Korea. The Korean approach has been highly influenced by the European Union (EU) experience emphasizing the importance of a bottom-up territorial development. The Korean government acknowledges agriculture is not the only driver of rural jobs and wealth creation. Rather it understands that diversified non-farm activities in rural areas are essential to revitalize the rural economy. The major policies relevant to the development of rural smart village are first, establishing regional innovation system fitted for depressed regions, second, inducing agriculture to become value-added industries, third, diversifying rural economic activities and integrating industrial support, fourth, improving the welfare of rural residents by improving settlement conditions, and finally, encouraging rural–urban interaction. Since the campaign of smart rural village as a rural development strategy is closely related with the discussion of rural tourism in Korea, this study investigates past and recent streams of rural tourism strategies pursued by the central government in Korea. Along with introducing the historical development strategy in Korea, this study presents the current and possible future characteristics of rural development strategies in Korea. This study investigates the perceived role of tourism as well as recent streams of rural development policies such as 6th industrialization and smart farming in the rural development strategies. Presenting success and failure stories, this study also considers why development of rural tourism has been slow in rural areas in Korea, reviewing restraints, reservations, and problems identified during the last few decades in Korea.

During the past two decades Croatia has faced numerous challenges: gaining independence, war conflicts, political and economic transition and the process of European Union (EU) accession. Despite rich and diversified landscapes and cultural heritage, it is still faced with problems limiting the economic development. So the purpose of this chapter is to point out the pragmatic reasons of Croatian delay in the process of adjustment to European business and agricultural policy standards.Based on statistic and literature analysis, the study determines specific characteristics of Croatian regions, rural areas, rural population and agriculture. Agriculture after independence shows increase in utilized area, but the production is still below pre-war level and results with unsteady and modest value. Harmonization with Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) standards is slow; big steps have been made in establishing new institutions in agriculture and preparing adequate legislative framework, so there are no significant formal differences between Croatian and European agricultural policy. However, European agricultural policy models cause problems. There is a daily debate about a low degree of self-sufficiency of the domestic production, low competitiveness and uncontrolled import of farm products. Farmers still often expect for the government to organize the production and guarantee the purchase prices as were in former, socialistic system.Due to these reasons, a fear was expressed by farmers that they could not be able to meet the strict criteria for the European financing. Despite this, a large part of farmers see the possibilities for their existence in rural areas, mostly through development of non-agricultural activities.

The objective of this chapter is to lay the foundation for the edited collection of contemporary research contributions contained in this book. Specifically, the chapter is concerned with defining and conceptualising rural entrepreneurship.

The chapter seeks to explore why and how a rural enterprise can be defined, and determines whether rural entrepreneurship is a distinctive category of entrepreneurship theory and practice. Building on descriptive rural enterprise taxonomies proposed in previous studies, the chapter considers the drivers and barriers impacting on firm start-up, growth and decline in rural environments.

The authors argue that there is little difference between a rural and non-rural enterprise in terms of structure, that is how the business is organised or managed, or how the characteristics of the individual entrepreneur are exhibited. Thus, it would appear that there is no specific category for, nor definition of a rural entrepreneur beyond that of ‘an individual who manages a venture in a rural setting’.

The chapter is based mainly on a review of extant literatures.

The chapter concludes that it is the exogenous factors that differentiate rural from non-rural ventures, and it is these factors that will have a significant impact on start-up, growth and failure rates.