From Village to Cloud: A Framework for the Emergence and Sustainability of Digital Social Enterprises (DSEs) in Rural Tourism

 INTRODUCTION: Diversification into tourism in rural economies has emerged as a viable pathway to enhance resilience, with digitalization further expanding reach, enriching visitor experiences, and enabling inclusive participation. Digital Social Enterprises (DSEs) – hybrid ventures that integrate a social mission with entrepreneurial approaches and digital technologies – offer significant potential for advancing sustainable rural tourism. Despite this promise, there is a lack of an integrated framework explaining how DSEs in rural tourism emerge and, subsequently, achieve long-term sustainability.OBJECTIVES: This conceptual paper addresses that gap by synthesizing concepts on digital social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intention theory, and sustainable rural tourism. RESULTS: It proposes a two-phase framework - emergence and sustainability -linking antecedents such as empathy, moral obligation, prior experience, and perceived feasibility and desirability, with enabling conditions including community assets, digital infrastructure, and ecosystem support, as well as hybrid organizing and legitimacyCONCLUSION: The framework is accompanied by propositions outlining how these factors interact to influence both the creation and endurance of rural tourism DSEs. The study contributes theoretically by bridging disparate research streams