Community Empowerment and Sustainable Tourism Development: The Mediating Role of Community Support for Tourism

Abstract

Though community empowerment and sustainable tourism development (STD) have been discussed in the existing literature, little research has focused on the elaborate mechanisms between these two variables. Therefore, the present study examines the relationship between community empowerment and STD, along with the mediating role played by community support for tourism. Using social exchange theory, this research establishes theoretical relationships between vital variables for STD. A survey of empirical study was undertaken, and data were collected from 353 local residents in the northern area of Pakistan. The results for data analyses demonstrated a significant relationship between community empowerment and STD initiatives, and community support for tourism was shown to partially mediate the relationship between the two variables. The findings imply that high community empowerment enables the community to establish successful sustainable tourism development through local people’s support for tourism. This study contributes theoretically to identifying the idea that community members’ support for tourism has a crucial function bridging the link from community empowerment to sustain tourism in a local area.

Relationship of Employee Training, Employee Empowerment, Team Work With Job Satisfaction

“…As per Sibanda et al, (2020) societal psychological theory describes that empowerment is the core cause behind the employee working and around working situation and he also elaborated six different related points like "potency, motivation, independence, values, relevancy and joy of life". It is as well as relevant to the employee inside growth, confidence, self-understanding and development (Khalid, et al, 2019). According to Berente, et al, (2019) empowerment could be analyzed at three different levels and such levels are relevant to the "personal, organizational and societal empowerment".…”

How to Promote Ethnic Village Residents’ Behavior Participating in Tourism Poverty Alleviation: A Tourism Empowerment Perspective

“…However, due to the imbalance of social development in ethnic villages, the villagers seem to be in a disadvantaged position ( Li et al, 2016 ). A series of problems such as low participation enthusiasm and frequency of residents occurs in the process of tourism poverty alleviation in ethnic villages, leading to a strange circle of “more help, more poverty.” The participation of residents is related to the sustainable development of tourism ( Murphy, 1988 ; Sharpley, 2014 ; Khalid et al, 2019 ; Shen et al, 2019 ) and the vital interests of residents ( Hwang et al, 2012 ). During the critical period of China to eradicate absolute poverty and secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, how to inspire ethnic village residents to participate in tourism poverty alleviation and improve the quality and effectiveness of tourism poverty alleviation has become an urgent issue for industry and academia ( Yang, 2017 ).…”

The Positive Impacts of Exhibition-Driven Tourism on Sustainable Tourism, Economics, and Population: The Case of the Echigo–Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan

“…However, the result from the data analysis provides evidence on the impacts of the relationship between exhibition-driven tourism (the ETAT) and the three studied aspects. Thus, we suggest that researchers in other parts of Japan and on other continents work together to produce similar studies, thereby creating a worldwide body of literature examining the phenomena related to the effects of certain types of festivals on key community variables [52,58].…”

“…This transformation is different in different periods. The most influential document on the relationship between population growth and economic development is "Population", published by Malthus in 1798, whose findings imply that high community empowerment enables a community to establish successful sustainable tourism development through local people's support for tourism [52]. For their empirical tests, data were collected from 280 tourists to Japan from South Korea (Nam et al [16]).…”