Disentangling the multiplicity of waste through relational ontology: Solid waste management in rural tourism destinations

Abstract

Most studies on tourism solid waste management (SWM) in tourism destinations emphasize human behavioral interventions for waste reduction, neglecting how multiple human-nonhuman relationships influence both waste generation and treatment. Grounded in relational ontology, this study conceptualizes waste as emergent effects of heterogeneous human-nonhuman entanglements and investigates the complex relationships of waste in tourism context. Empirical evidence from Xidi and Hongcun, China, was collected through in-depth interviews, observation, and secondary data. Findings reveal waste's multiple identities-as resource, leftover of experience, someone else's problem and tricky hazard-across different stages of SWM. These identities are enacted by synergistic or antagonistic interactions among material, sociocultural and economic clusters of waste-related relationships. Tourism development further inhibits or promotes these interactions, resulting in varied prominence of each identity of waste, which represented as large-scale generation, extensive transfer, and limited recycling. This study advances relational conceptualization of waste in tourism context and advocates relation-based SWM strategies for rural destinations.