Empowerment and resident support for tourism in rural Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): the case of Pomerania,Poland |
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Authors: | Marianna Strzelecka B. Bynum Boley Celina Strzelecka |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Organization and Entrepreneurship, The School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden;2. Natural Resources Recreation and Tourism (NRRT), Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA;3. Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland |
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Abstract: | Despite empowerment being a crucial component of sustainable tourism, few scholars have quantitatively operationalized empowerment and looked at how it applies to rural societies within the post-communist European Union (EU) member states. Knowing the high priority of sustainable rural development goals within the EU, empowering residents within these post-communist societies has become a pertinent issue especially where those societies appear more reluctant to engaging in democratic ways of decision-making. In response to this gap, this study tests the cross-cultural validity of the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale, and then evaluates how empowerment predicts residents’ support for tourism within the municipality of Choczewo, Pomerania, Poland. Using a theoretical perspective that blends Social Exchange Theory with Weber's Theory of Formal and Substantive Rationality, these non-economic empowerment dimensions are coupled with a measure of resident perceptions of economically benefiting from tourism to see if rural residents in Choczewo, Poland, are more swayed by the economic or non-economic benefits of tourism. Results show that residents within this Central and Eastern Europe setting are more influenced by the pride and self-esteem boost associated with psychological empowerment and the perceptions of increased community cohesion (i.e. social empowerment) than the economic promises of tourism. |
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Keywords: | Empowerment sustainable tourism sustainable development resident attitudes towards tourism confirmatory factory analysis structural equation modeling European Union (EU) |
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