Re-examining the participation and empowerment nexus: Applications to community-based tourism

Abstract

The centrality of community involvement in tourism activities has been widely recognized globally by practitioners and stakeholders alike. Within this recognition community-based tourism (CBT) initiatives have been widely accepted as a favorable form of tourism activity—especially when promoting pro-poor and sustainable strategies for marginalized communities. Arguably, the success of CBT initiatives is underpinned by the participation of communities in the planning, development, and managing processes that bring them about. Supporting these assumptions is the theoretical link between participation and empowerment, where community participation leads to the empowerment of community members. Over the years, however, existing studies have also provided ambivalent accounts suggesting the complexity of these relationships is not well understood. As several studies have pointed out, tourism participation does not invariably and naturally result in empowerment. In contributing to the existing discourse, this study explores the nexus between participation and empowerment by proposing a revised participation-empowerment model. The resulting model suggests that while communities require some level of empowerment to participate effectively in CBT, through continuous interaction they can increase their level of participation along with their level of empowerment.