Between Restriction and Resource: Social Capital and Women’s Informal Tourism Entrepreneurship in Impoverished Contexts

This article aims to examine whether and how women informal tourism entrepreneurs in poor rural destinations in Iran adopt different strategies to access financial and non-financial resources. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory and in-depth interviews, two groups of participants were identified with contrasting social orientations toward social capital and gendered constraints. These orientations shape their positioning along the necessity–opportunity entrepreneurship continuum. Through abductive analysis, the study integrates a social capital perspective with an entrepreneurship typology to develop a theoretical model explaining transitions between informal–formal and necessity–opportunity modes. The findings contribute to a dualistic understanding of social capital, highlighting how internal mindsets are shaped by and respond to traditional gender norms in influencing entrepreneurial behavior.