Regenerative tourism, heritage and community resilience

This paper examines how small heritage sites contribute to regenerative tourism and community resilience in the post-industrial town of Paisley, Scotland. Drawing on a community focus group and semi-structured interviews with local businesses, the study suggests that small heritage sites strengthen identity, collective memory, participation, and informal social infrastructures. However, their regenerative potential is constrained by fragmented governance, uneven economic spillovers, limited visibility, and underdeveloped interpretation. Rather than representing a linear pathway to regeneration, heritage-led tourism emerges as a relational process shaped by governance, participation, and everyday community engagement. The study advances the conceptual development of regenerative tourism by demonstrating that regeneration is a relational, community-centred process rather than a linear outcome of tourism development.