Beyond Managerialism: A Critical Review of Overtourism Governance and the Chinese Challenge

Abstract

Overtourism has become a prominent concept in tourism studies, but its rapid diffusion has not always been matched by equivalent theoretical development. This article argues that overtourism governance research remains largely shaped by a managerialist logic that frames the issue in terms of congestion, visitor pressure, and destination efficiency. Although this approach has generated useful policy instruments such as visitor caps, timed-entry systems, pricing mechanisms, and dispersal strategies, it has also narrowed the field’s analytical horizon. Drawing on scholarship on tourism governance, justice, degrowth, resilience, path dependence, platformisation, and relational destination theory, this critical review identifies four key limitations in the literature: technocratic and linear framings, insufficient attention to power and political economy, weak recognition of socio-ecological relationality, and limited applicability beyond Western urban contexts. The article further argues that China provides a theoretically important setting for reconsidering overtourism governance. In state-led tourism systems shaped by developmental priorities, administrative hierarchy, and uneven stakeholder participation, overtourism cannot be adequately understood through collaborative and managerial assumptions alone. The paper concludes by proposing a configurational and relational governance perspective that foregrounds justice, path dependence, socio-ecological interdependence, and the structural conditions under which tourism excess becomes normalised.