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This study aims to investigate how the village government implements internal control, accountability, transparency and participation in the good governance practice for corruption prevention and detection in Indonesia.

This study is qualitative research by conducting a semi-structured interview with village staff, village consultative council members and auditors.

The findings highlight three major issues contributing to poor governance and the failure to prevent and detect corruption.

The regulator should urgently provide accounting standards, audit standards and internal control regulations for the village to create good governance for eradicating corruption.

This paper is a ground-breaking study that investigates the governance practice in the village as an anchor to solve the chronic corruption problem and offers a new direction of research in the village government.

The Indonesian government's Village-Owned Enterprises (BUMDes) initiative optimizes Village Resources (SDD)—human and natural—to improve rural communities' welfare. Villagers must participate in many ways. Due to its natural potential, industry, waste management and building management business units, BUMDes Waskito Wijaya in Waru village, Baki sub-district, Sukoharjo Regency, Central Java has the potential to grow. Strengthening social capital helps BUMDes management become sustainable.

The focus of this research is to find out what social capital characteristics that can improve the development of BUMDes Waskito Wijaya. Thus, this study uses a SWOT analysis to establish BUMDes by promoting village influencers, strong institutions, and internal and external social networks. Thus, strong bonding, linking and bridging will improve BUMDes' involvement in the village. This research describes the organization's internal and external situations and formulates the BUMDes development strategy empirically.

This study revealed that norms, trust, social networks and infrastructure positively impact BUMDes development. However, the social capital created is still in the bonding stage. While the linking and bridging stages are not yet sufficient to support a productive and prosperous BUMDes.

Thus, the developed strategy encourages the strong leadership spirit of the village influencers, creates aspirational and supportive institutions, and strengthens social networks both horizontally and vertically. Consequently, the linking and bridging that can actively engage in partnerships and build public trust will successfully be achieved. The condition will develop the capacity of BUMDes in providing facilities for the community.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2022-0700

According to the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, there are 7,275 indigenous tourism enterprises in Indonesia. However, only 0.5% of these are certified as a sustainable tourism village. One of them is the Karangrejo village in Borobudur, Indonesia. This village is able to sustain their enterprise, which is a unique and rare context. This study aims to address this gap by examining the sense of place value created from the collaboration between actors, mapping the actors and their resources who have crucial roles in indigenous tourism enterprise, and examining the relations between actors, mapping the characteristics and efforts made by the indigenous tourism enterprise. The novelty of this research is the unique context that it takes place, and the use of comprehensive theoretical perspectives combining architecture, sociological social psychology and marketing/business theories in tourism context, which is uncommon for research in this area.

Participants in this study were 17 individuals, comprising Village Chief, accompanying state-owned enterprises, tourists, owners of micro, small and medium enterprises, village economic center manager and village-owned enterprises manager. Data were collected from interviews and field recordings using purposive sampling technique. The study design was a case study. The data were coded in two steps: first cycle and second cycle coding. Member checking with research participants was conducted to ensure data credibility.

This study revealed several novel findings. First, sense of place value was not merely perceived as material and nonmaterial components, but also as networks between actors that were involved in creating such components within (value) exchange framework. Second, the actors involved in the exchange were provider actor, external supporter actor, internal supporter actor, collaborator actor and consumer actor. Each of these actors owned one or a combination of material and nonmaterial values that are exchangeable. Mapping of the actors involved was discussed using a combined perspective of consumer-centric and balanced network. Third, exchange relations that occurred between actors could be balanced or imbalanced, depending on the amount of resource owned by each actor. Nonetheless, imbalanced relations because of discrepancies in the value contributions could still have positive impact because it was motivated by the intention to help others. Fourth, this study identified the importance of having characteristics as resource integrator/gatherer for indigenous tourism enterprise (provider actor) to ensure the economic sustainability of their business.

This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, where governments imposed strict travel restrictions. Consequently, data from tourists were limited in particular, the lack of perspectives from international tourists. During the data collection, the government were still limiting international travelers to visit the country, hence only domestic tourists were able to visit. The perspectives of international tourists would have added valuable data. Because of pandemic, the data collection process was initially conducted online, which was then followed by in-person data collection. Online data collection is common in research; however, in-person data collection would have been more preferred, where possible, so that the researchers could directly observe the situation in context. Future research could be conducted after the pandemic ends. Furthermore, findings of this research asserted the importance of actors’ motives, situations, quality of the values and relational attributes, but had not discussed these in detail, especially from the perspective of each actor. Future research could address this limitation.

Enhancing material and nonmaterial sense of place value would involve multiple actors. Therefore, mapping of the resources owned by these actors as well as their roles is critical. To create sense of place value, synergy between actors is essential and could not be achieved by a single actor. Every actor is influenced by motives and circumstances when interacting with the other actor. Awareness of such motives and circumstances where the exchange takes place is necessary, to ensure that the cultivated relationship aligns with the goals and expectations. As exchange relations could be balanced or imbalanced, every actor also needs to be aware of their position and continuously evaluate it to avoid being constantly in a powerless position. Indigenous tourism enterprise could not singlehandedly provide every resource needed. Therefore, developing a character as a gatherer/resource integrator becomes crucial to gain access to all necessary resources. Currently, there are no tools available for identifying actors, resources and relational attributes. This could be a potential avenue for academics in this area. Further, the government should identify the best practice from the successful indigenous tourism enterprises, not only giving recognition awards or certifications to these enterprises.

Findings from this study have several contributions; among others, it discussed sense of place value of indigenous tourism enterprise more comprehensively, as the essential actors who exchange resources were identified. This study also underlined positive power imbalance, which had been generally seen as a negative dynamic. Moreover, this study highlighted that indigenous people, despite living by communal value (non-transactional) in their daily lives, would need to engage in transactional relations and develop resource integrator characteristics to maintain tourism enterprise. Indigenous people have often been seen from their communal side, while their transactional (non-communal) side has been rarely seen.

This study aims to propose a Sharīʿah-based and information and communication technology-driven microfinance model (SIMM) to reduce extreme poverty in rural areas. Existing microfinance models run by microfinance institutions exclude severely poor individuals from their activities.

This study uses an exploratory sequential mixed-method design structured as Studies 1 and 2. Study 1 uses the grounded theory methodology to develop the emergent SIMM through interviews and focus group discussions with the participants (12 rich, 6 rural elites and 18 poor) of the target village. Study 2 uses a survey of 421 household members in the target village to evaluate their attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC) related to SIMM. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling is used to evaluate relationships between constructs.

Study 1 identifies seven themes, in which aspirational hope is recognised as a core theme. Study 2 indicates significant relationships between ATT and PBC and between SN and PBC. Thus, the SIMM can alleviate poverty in rural communities.

The application of the SIMM in the pilot study provides aspirational hope for eradicating extreme poverty.

Other rural communities should be encouraged to apply the SIMM to alleviate extreme poverty in their villages.

This study contributes to the development of an innovative microfinance model (SIMM) to eradicate extreme poverty in rural areas.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which rural infrastructure resilience (RIR) impacted population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

This study considered 213 administrative villages in Longxi County in the Longzhong loess hilly region as the evaluation unit. Based on the construction of a multidimensional RIR evaluation system, the spatial spillover effect of RIR on population loss was determined using the spatial Durbin model (SDM).

The average resilience of each subsystem of rural infrastructure in Longxi County was low, and there were large differences in the spatial distribution. The mean RIR index value was 0.2258, with obvious spatial directivity and agglomeration characteristics. The population loss index of Longxi County had a value of 0.1759, with 26.29 of villages having a high loss level. The population loss was relatively serious and was correlated with the spatial distribution of RIR. The villages with larger RIR index values had lower population loss. The RIR had a significant spatial spillover effect on population loss. Productive infrastructure resilience and living infrastructure resilience (LIR) had negative spillover effects on population loss, and social service infrastructure resilience (SSIR) had a positive spillover effect on population loss.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which RIR impacted on population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

This study aims to explore the social networks and network interactions of bed-and-breakfast (B&B) entrepreneurs in rural China. In addition, it evaluates how such network interactions relate to rural resilience.

In-depth interviews were performed in two locations: Ningbo and Dujiangyan, China. Purposive sampling was combined with snowball sampling to select interviewees. The 154 interviews involved 29 B&B owners and relevant social actors. All codes and data were analyzed using the discourse analysis framework.

The B&B owners’ social networks were identified based on strategic goals, revealing a business operation network, business development network and business citizenship network. Challenges in seeking financial support for rural B&Bs during the pandemic were specified along with network interactions. The institutional adaptation approach was used to evaluate network interaction in rural B&B business. It was argued that other networks would react based on primary network members’ goal compatibility and the effectiveness of the primary network in addressing obstacles.

This study indicates that the rural B&B entrepreneurs’ interactions with various networks could influence on business resilience, community resilience as well as rural resilience.

By combining the institutional adaptation typology with social network theory, this study generates a new typology of network interactions for rural B&Bs. The typology helps to explain how and why B&B entrepreneurs make decisions and provides a broader scope of social networks involved in these business operations.

This study investigated the role of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, by concentrating on the obstacles that hinder effective governance of community infrastructure planning.

The qualitative approach via case study design was adopted in this study. The Song District, located in the State of Sarawak, Malaysia, was selected as the case study area. Semi-structured interview sessions were conducted with 21 respondents who belonged to the government agencies involved in rural community infrastructure planning and village community representatives to capture their views on community infrastructure development planning in the selected district. The gathered responses were analysed thematically and the outcomes are discussed.

The findings revealed that although the development of community infrastructure in Song District has progressed and has exerted transformative impacts on rural livelihood, several challenges were identified in the delivery of community infrastructure. The four main themes of challenges that emerged from the data were location factors, financial resources, cooperation and collaboration of stakeholders, as well as community involvement. The outcomes disclosed that, in terms of governance, the institutional roles of the community, stakeholders and government agencies must be integrated throughout the rural community infrastructure planning process to resolve the emerging challenges effectively so that the demands of the rural community are met meritoriously.

An effective and efficient community infrastructure planning approach ascertains that the community infrastructure development gaps in rural areas are bridged and brings fruition to the rural communities for their livelihood transformation.

This paper delineates a view on the governance aspect of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, that is largely untapped. The study outcomes may facilitate practitioners and academics to move forward and recommend improvements in the approach to rural community infrastructure planning.

This study explores whether targeted microcredit can effectively alleviate households’ multidimensional relative poverty (MdRP) in rural China in the new era following the poverty elimination campaign and discusses it from a gendered perspective.

This study applies a fixed-effects model, propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage instrumental variable method to two-period panel data collected from 611 households in rural western China in 2018 and 2021 to explore the effects, mechanisms and heterogenous performance of targeted microcredit on households’ MdRP in the new era.

(i) Targeted microcredit can alleviate MdRP among rural households in the new era, mainly by reducing income and opportunity inequality. (ii) Targeted microcredit can promote women’s empowerment, mainly by enhancing their social participation, thereby helping alleviate households’ MdRP. The effect of the targeted microcredit on MdRP is more significant in medium-educated women households and non-left-behind women households. (iii) The MdRP alleviation effect is stronger in villages with a high degree of digitalization.

Learn from the experience of targeted microcredit. Accurately identify poor groups and integrate loan design into financial health and women empowerment. Particularly, pay attention to less-educated and left-behind women households and strengthen coordination between targeted microcredit and digital village strategies.

This study clarifies the effect of targeted microcredit on women’s empowerment and households’ MdRP alleviation in the new era. It also explores its various effects on households with different female characteristics and regional digitalization levels, providing ideas for optimizing microcredit.

This research aims to examine the introduction of participatory budgeting (PB) in local governments in two Francophone countries, namely, Benin and Niger, and how local contextual factors influence its practices.

The research employs a multiple case study design with a comparative approach to analyze the introduction and practices of participatory budgeting across selected municipalities in Benin and Niger. Hopper (2017) and Lassou et al.’s (2018) notion of “pragmatism” within neopatrimonialism is mobilized to analyze the data from sources including interviews and documents. The analysis is conducted at both the country and local government levels.

Participatory budgeting took roots in a number of municipalities. Its introduction and adoption has promoted participatory governance especially from traditionally marginalized segments of society (e.g. women); albeit to varying degrees, in the face of the prevailing national neopatrimonial context. Furthermore, despite donor's push for a standardized model of PB implementation, actual practices took varying shapes, a consequence of differing local conditions and circumstances.

In terms of limitation, it was not possible to access a number of research participants sought, particularly in Niger. But access to key documents from government, donors and civil society organizations help mitigate this to a large extent.

A major practical implication is the importance of adaptation to local socio-economic contexts and circumstances. As shown in the study, a blanket introduction and implementation of PB across societies based on a standardized model is unlikely to succeed and be sustained in the long run. A great deal of flexibility is required to accommodate indigenous realities on the grounds.

The study contributes to shed light on public sector budgeting regarding participatory budgeting practices in an under-researched setting: Francophone Africa.