From periphery to pathway: museums as institutional gateways for rural tourism value co-creation

Rural destinations often possess rich cultural and natural resources yet struggle to convert these assets into sustained tourism demand. This study examines how museums located in the peripheries of established destinations function as institutional transit points that enable value co-creation and facilitate tourists’ progression toward deeper rural engagement. Grounded in service-dominant logic and integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework with the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the study adopts a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design. Qualitative findings from Malawi show that tourism underperformance stems less from resource scarcity than from weak institutional orchestration, infrastructural constraints, and limited interpretive mechanisms. Quantitative results from India and Malawi (n = 422) indicate that motivations influence behavioural intentions indirectly through destination image, while constraints shape perceived feasibility and moderate cognition–intention relationships. The findings position peripheral museums as gateway institutions that translate host-side readiness into tourist cognition and behaviour, advancing rural tourism theory and destination planning.