Anticipated and Regulated Contextual Determinants of Social Innovation in Rural Tourism: The Role of Public Authorities

This study analyzes the contextual determinants anticipated or regulated by public authorities in support of social innovation in rural tourism, using the theory of change as the central analytical framework. Applied to the Marrakech–Safi region --characterized by pronounced territorial disparities and growing environmental vulnerability—the analysis seeks to understand how public action integrates contextual constraints into the design and implementation of territorial policies. Based on a corpus of discourses collected through semi-structured interviews, the study adopts a lexicometric approach combining frequency distribution analysis, correspondence factor analysis, similarity analysis, and word cloud visualization. The results reveal a strong discursive emphasis on local activation dynamics, cooperation, and bottom-up social innovation, reflecting a territorialized orientation of public action. However, mechanisms of strategic anticipation and institutional regulation appear weakly formalized in the discourses, pointing to a partially articulated causal chain of change. Contextual determinants—particularly climatic, economic, and institutional factors—are more often recognized as constraints to be managed than as structuring parameters integrated upstream into public planning. This configuration highlights an imbalance between ex post adaptation and proactive anticipation, as well as a central challenge related to institutional learning. The study thus underscores the need to strengthen the articulation between territorial activation, adaptive regulation, and risk anticipation in order to sustainably support social innovation in rural tourism in the Marrakech–Safi region.