How Empowering Local Communities Influences Sustainable Tourism Development: The Mediating Role of Community Participation

Abstract

Community empowerment has gained a lot of importance over the last decade because it has a positive influence on the achievement of sustainable tourism. This research will discuss the mediation effect of community participation (CP) on relationship between government empowering policies and sustainable tourism development (STD). Particularly, the study suggests CP as a major mediator between the aspects of empowerment of local communities (ELC) and enhanced sustainability performance in tourism destinations. A sample of 384 stakeholders, comprising local residents, tourism entrepreneurs and the policymakers in Jordan, was used to obtain data which were analyzed through structural equation modelling (SEM). It has been shown that ELC has a positive and direct prediction of CP as well as STD. The results also indicate that CP has a significant positive impact on the results of sustainable tourism. On top of these, CP was also discovered to play an important role in mediating the relationship between community empowerment and STD. Based on the idea of the stakeholder theory and sustainable development theory (SDT), the case study indicates that ELC is extremely vital and contributes to the active engagement promotion to contribute to the environmental sustainability, socio-cultural conservation, and economic gains in the tourist destinations. The implications of the findings to the policy makers and tourism planners in Jordan is that inclusive policies should be designed to enhance CP and STD in the long term.