Co-producing blue tourism futures: reflexivity and stakeholder legitimacy in island governance

Abstract

This study explores how sustainability is interpreted and enacted within blue tourism through a reflexive governance lens. Focusing on three island destinations in Vietnam, it applies a novel methodological framework, Reflexive-Ecological Stakeholder Enactment (RESE), to examine how residents, tourists, and businesses engage with ecological disruption, legitimacy claims, and emotional attachment to place. Using Ecological Reflex Mapping (ERM), the study identifies ten interpretive codes, including both elicited and emergent dimensions such as ecological trigger, emotional register, and reflexive shift. Findings show that reflexivity is not only shaped by policy but by lived experience, moral reasoning, and informal governance. Emotional and symbolic ties to marine environments influence how sustainability is recognized, judged, and embodied. The paper advances a more situated understanding of blue economy transitions, highlighting the need for governance models that account for affect, identity, and everyday ethical negotiation in contested coastal spaces.