Catalysing regenerative transitions in mountain destinations through moral repair: Participatory action research

While recent tourism scholarship champions the transformative potential of regenerative tourism, the lived realities and moral agency of frontline workers in climate-vulnerable regions remain underexplored. Underpinned by regenerative justice and moral repair, this study examines how Nepal's high-altitude tourism workers address the ethical and ecological harms of tourism practices to advance regenerative justice in vulnerable mountain ecosystems. It employs a four-stage participatory action approach, including stakeholder interviews, a key stakeholder meeting, a co-creation workshop, and follow-up consultations. Findings reveal a three-stage mechanism for pursuing regenerative justice through moral repair: dis-embedding from conditions of precarity in tourism work, engaging in moral repair practices, and re-embedding into relations of care. It also cautions that workers' latent agency remains dormant until reflexive distancing from historical experiences of harm occurs. By centring the moral agency and lived experiences of marginalised workers, the study advances the understanding of regenerative justice and provides important practical implications.