Institutional Dilemmas and Adaptive Practices of Pet Tourists

Abstract

The rapid growth of China's pet economy has made pet tourism an emerging market, yet institutional supply lags significantly behind. Employing grounded theory and triangulated qualitative methods (auto-ethnography, policy analysis, interviews, netnography), this study investigates the structural constraints confronting pet tourists and their adaptive responses. Findings reveal three intertwined institutional dilemmas—deficiencies in formal institutions, ambiguities in informal institutions, and biases in cognitive institutions—as primary obstacles. In response, pet tourists develop dual-level adaptive practices: pre-trip adaptation (information restructuring, route planning, risk preparation) and on-journey innovation (community sharing, service co-creation, on-site negotiation). These practices generate four differentiated experiential outcomes: cancellation, compromise, success, and resistance. Theoretically, this study introduces the concept of "institutional dilemmas" into tourism experience research, constructing an analytical framework of "institutional constraints—adaptive practices—tourism experience" that reveals the institutional embeddedness of tourist experiences. It also enriches the study of informal tourism consumption from a consumer perspective, offering empirical insights for optimizing pet-friendly service provision.