Purpose The public health emergency of COVID-19 (Corona-virus disease) pandemic has greatly impacted tourism industry, especially in the rural tourism. This paper aims to study how rural tourism practitioners can get out of the mire of the pandemic. By analyzing the behaviors of various stakeholders and the logic of the impact of the pandemic, the behaviors of participants and future development were sorted out. The key elements that promote the recovery of rural tourism were discovered. Design/methodology/approach Based on the framework of institute analysis and development (IAD), this research selected six rural tourist communities in China as subjects for the studies. Based on the seven basic principles of hermeneutics and the inductive research method, following the analysis method of “first-order coding, second-order coding, aggregated dimensions,” the texts obtained through in-depth interview and work reports were analyzed and concepts were extracted. Findings The paper extracted 44 first-order concepts and 14 second-order concepts, and obtained 7 aggregation dimensions, including policy formulation and implementation, improvement of integrated marketing capabilities, improvement of tourism product quality, restrictions on rural tourism development, protection and optimization of environmental resources, industrial integration strategies and improvement of managerial and coordinating capabilities. During the pandemic, the government, enterprises and associations, as the service providers of rural tourism, can optimize the environmental resources and industrial resources of rural tourism by formulating policies, refining products and strengthening marketing in the action arena, to promote the industrial integration of rural tourism and provide better products and services for tourists. Originality/value This paper uses the IAD framework to study how rural tourism communities can successfully recover from the impact of the pandemic. It is found that the rapid recovery of rural tourism is the result of collective action. The core of establishing the collective action mechanism of rural tourism is consensus mechanism, co-construction mechanism and sharing mechanism. By studying the path and possibility of collective action of rural tourism communities, this paper explores the approach of multi-center governance of rural tourism communities to promote the imminent recovery of rural tourism.
