Not perfect, but meeting a need: community-driven resilience in informal transport service ecosystems

Purpose This study aims to examine how inclusive transport provision is sustained within structurally constrained service ecosystems. Focusing on commuters with disabilities in Nigeria, it explores how strengths are mobilised across multiple actors under limited formal institutional support to sustain access and dignity. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on qualitative interviews with commuters with disabilities, informal transport providers and subject matter experts. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis and abductive logic to enable iterative engagement between empirical insights and service ecosystem and strength-based perspectives. Findings Inclusion is sustained through community-driven resilience, a multi-actor, ecosystem-level process of resource mobilisation, enacted through cultural–moral activation and relational service adaptation. Cultural and moral expectations provide normative coordination, while trust, proximity and familiarity enable relational coordination and flexible service adaptation. These mechanisms enable ecosystem self-adjustment, although inclusion remains uneven and contingent. Research limitations/implications The study extends strength-based approaches from individual capabilities to ecosystem-level strength mobilisation and advances service ecosystem research by explaining how self-adjustment occurs through informal coordination without resolving underlying structural constraints. It demonstrates how informal institutional arrangements can support service continuity where formal arrangements are weak. Practical implications Inclusive mobility interventions should build on community strengths while strengthening accessible, consistent, rights-based formal provision without shifting institutional responsibility onto informal resilience. Originality/value The study conceptualises community-driven resilience as a processual service mechanism linking structural conditions, collective resource mobilisation and inclusion through informal institutional and relational coordination in structurally constrained service ecosystems.