and this is why the concept of resilience incorporates the ideas of adaptation, learning and self-organization in addition to the general ability to persist post-disturbance (Folke, 2006).
Calgaro et al. (2014) claim that a lack of understanding of the factors that build and affect destination resilience and vulnerability lead to an inability to effectively build community resilience. Similarly, Pizzo (2015) warns that the notion of resilience is becoming a buzzword and argues that after an unexpected event, not all communities have to be resilient nor should they be resilient to every unexpected event, nor should they be resilient in the same way as a previous similar event. Therefore, communities are not always looking for a new equilibrium, nor are they looking simply to bounce back to their pre-disaster state, especially if the state was less than desirable to begin with (Cowell, 2013). Community – and, hence, destination – resilience is, thus, not the sum of individuals and organizations being resilient (Cutter et al., 2014; Pizzo, 2015). Although these can help to build community and destination resilience (Prayag, 2018), the role of place or neighbourhood in developing social networks for a community’s disaster preparedness, response and resilience appears critical (Cox & Perry, 2011; Biggs et al., 2012, 2015; Aldrich & Meyer, 2015; Masterson et al., 2017). The sense of connectedness to the new changed reality is important not only for individuals but also for the community as a whole. Hence, the importance of place attachment for disaster recovery has become increasingly emphasized (Guo et al., 2018). As an example, owneroperators of lifestyle tourism enterprises can develop emotional attachment to their businesses and the associated sense of place, making them more reluctant to abandon the business and the location in difficult times, thus strengthening their resilience in the face of disasters (Biggs et al., 2015).
Related to the above, the literature clearly pinpoints to social capital as an enabler of organizational and community resilience (Biggs et al., 2012, 2015; Hall et al., 2018; Chowdhury et al., 2019). Aldrich (2012) after an extensive review of disaster recovery related to, for example, the Kobe 1995 earthquakes, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and 2005 Hurricane Katrina argued that social capital serves as a core engine of disaster recovery. Social capital is the goodwill engendered by the fabric of social relations that can be mobilized to facilitate action (Adler & Kwon, 2002). Different forms of social capital such as bonding, bridging and linking emerge in the different disaster relief, rehabilitation and recovery phases and play different roles towards overall long term recovery (Blackman et al., 2017). Kinship networks encourage cohesion, connectedness, reassurance and stability in times of need. They also facilitate access to financial capital and power networks (Calgaro et al., 2014). Social sources of resilience such as social capital, which is grounded in trust and social networks and social memory (the experience of dealing with change) are essential for the capacity of socioecological systems to adapt and shape change (Folke et al., 2005). Disaster relief work should, therefore, provide instrumental, informational and emotional support to community members through facilitating them to seek out others and establish bonds with people they know and even strangers. This is the fundamental premise of social relationships postdisaster (Reich, 2006), and, hence the building of social capital. A resilient community or destination is an inter-connected community (Allenby & Fink, 2005). Opportunities to build capacity and capability though the acquisition of new skills, and knowledge sharing would therefore enhance community resilience (Cradock-Henry et al., 2018).
A resilient tourism organization adjusts its operations, management and marketing strategies to sustain under dramatically changing conditions (Dahles & Susilowati, 2015). In the case of the Canterbury earthquakes, Chowdhury et al. (2019) showed that different forms of social capital such as structural, relational and cognitive capital are important but only relational capital had a significant influence on adaptive resilience of tourism organizations. The importance of social capital can also be seen in its direct impact on the financial performance of tourism organizations (Prayag et al., 2018). Both social capital and resilience require trust from actors. If actors trust each other they are more likely to collaborate beyond the restrictions of hierarchical organizations and daily routines (Rogers et al., 2016). The ‘silo effect’ of inter and intra-organizations often negatively impacts their ability to effectively respond to disasters. The ability to find alternative resources is critical to the resilience of tourism organizations (Dahles & Susilowati, 2015) and communities. Organizational resilience has been described as the inherent characteristics of organizations that are able to respond more quickly, recover faster or develop more unusual ways of doing business under duress compared to others (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003). Therefore, tourism organizations need resources to bounce back but often these reside outside the boundaries of the community and require actors’ trust of each other and the political processes to share such resources. For business recovery following the Canterbury earthquakes, several national government led initiatives were put in place to support all businesses, including tourism. For example, the earthquake subsidy scheme was introduced by the government, available immediately after the February 2011 earthquake, vouchers were provided to help build capability in earthquake affected businesses, business mentors were appointed to help them to bounce back, and Red Cross grants were available to help businesses to access legal, financial and engineering advice (EQ Recovery Learning, 2016).
Resilience takes place at multiple levels, individual, organizational and community, but few studies explore how the different levels interact (Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003; Linnenluecke, 2017). In the context of the Canterbury earthquakes, Prayag et al. (2019b) showed that in small and medium tourism enterprises, the psychological resilience of owners and managers have an influence on employee resilience, which in turn positively impacts organizational resilience. They highlight that life satisfaction has a role to play post-disaster in building organizational resilience. This aligns with previous studies suggesting that a lack of resilience at one level can undermine resilience at other levels (Hall et al., 2018; Pizzo, 2015). Although research and policy highlight the need to understand human factors in determining adaptive capacity, these are seldom integrated in current disaster models and frameworks (Amore et al., 2018). Individual, family and community characteristics that build resilience, as part of the so-called healthy functioning adaptive systems that support them, are often reduced to minor factors affecting the recovery strategies of communities (Brown & Westaway, 2011). Nevertheless, a significant body of research exists around the resilience of individuals and the role of psychological capital in facilitating recovery from disasters but these have not been integrated adequately in current disaster management models. After disasters people need to believe that they have the personal resources to achieve goals such as rebuilding their homes and businesses, getting jobs and starting their lives again. The psychological key to rebounding is the effort to regain personal control. Disaster planning for tourism, should therefore provide pathways for allowing community members, including business owners or managers and employees to re-establish personal control (Reich, 2006) and facilitate the process of building psychological resilience. Luthans et al. (2006), for example, suggest that the resilience of employees can be developed through organizational interventions, for instance, by asking employees to identify personal setbacks within their work domain, to assess the realistic impact of their setback and to identify options for taking action. Resilience in this context is seen as a contributing factor towards employee psychological capital (Linnenluecke, 2017). However, there is an urgent need for studies examining psychological capital in tourism organizations and communities dependent on tourism (Hall et al., 2018; Prayag, 2018).
Resilience and sustainability
Resilience is usually used in the context of coping with change and responding to specific shocks and this relates to short-term survival and recovery (Rose, 2011). Sustainability revolves around long-term survival and improving the quality of life and the environment. In the tourism literature, there is considerable emphasis on resilience to immediate challenges but there is also merit in conceptualizing resilience as a dynamic long-term state, highlighting the obvious parallels with the concept of sustainability (Espiner et al., 2017). Both resilience and sustainability have been described as highly abstract and multifaceted concepts, each with a variety of definitions and interpretations (Derissen et al., 2011; Hall et al., 2018). Resilience is often viewed in normative terms as a need or commitment to become more resilient, similar to the concept of