Understanding Agritourism: A Chayanovian analysis

Abstract

Agritourism has generally been analysed in relation to the conventional economy and is therefore occasionally concluded to be inefficient. The contribution of the article is to show that agritourism must be understood from a different logic. Applying the Chayanovian concept of "differential optima", we obtain four conclusions: a) Agritourism can only be understood by recognizing the exceptionality of peasant logic; b) no income source is independent in a pluriactive economy, and cannot be studied in isolation; c) tourism does not have a unidirectional impact on depeasantization or repeasantization processes, but rather depends on the economic context and the strategies of each family unit; and d) peasant logic makes it possible to manage the vulnerability of the tourism sector (resilience).