Increasing participation in pro-poor tourism: study of predictors to promote prosocial behavior to other reference groups

ABSTRACT Pro-Poor Tourism (PPT) is an approach to alleviate absolute poverty and has two perspectives: increasing the profit allocation to the poor and expanding the profit itself. This study focuses on the latter and investigates factors to increase people’s intention to participate in PPT. However, the participating intention was interpreted based on donation intention to absolute poverty, a global prosocial behavior, because PPT has low social recognition. The structural equation modeling suggested that donation intention was affected by Empathic Concern (EC) and Social Norms (SN). However, the donation is an actual behavior, but PPT is a concept. Therefore, the study indicated embodying the concept as products to stimulate tourists’ EC, such as optional tours which distribute preferential benefits to the poor. On the other hand, for social norms to function, the study also indicated that consensus needs to cultivate that PPT effectively alleviates absolute poverty, a global issue.