Coordination Mechanism of Stakeholders in Tourism Destinations: A Social Network Analysis Exploration

The relationship between stakeholders is intensive and complicated, thus, understanding the relationship between stakeholders is important for the successful management of tourism destinations. To make it viable, this paper applies network analysis and third party in stakeholder theory and explores the interest coordination mechanism of stakeholders by quantitative method. Based on the fieldwork undertaken in the Hangzhou West Lake Heritage Site (World Heritage Site) from June to September in 2018, it systematically investigated the identification, classification and interests of stakeholders. The data collection method comprised an expert panel (n = 29) and a stakeholder survey (n = 274) in finding the classification and interest of stakeholders in the most scenic spot at the Hangzhou West Lake Heritage Site, China. The results suggest two main findings: each stakeholder has a different kind of interests and these interests are hierarchical; stakeholders play different roles in the relationship network and lead to unbalanced relationships, which one party has a relationship of constraints or dependencies on the other party. Based on the findings and further, a coordination mechanism is proposed by the application of the third party as a coordinator in the social relationship network for destination tourism management.