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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.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Marianna Strzelecka
Marianna Strzelecka is a senior lecturer in Tourism Studies within the School of Business and Economics at Linneaus University, Sweden. Her research focuses on sustainable tourism with specific interest in community participation, empowerment and place attachment. The most recent projects integrate the concepts of rural tourism and nature conservation and highlight the sociocultural aspects of the relationships between communities of place and local natural and cultural landscapes.
B. Bynum Boley
B. Bynum Boley is an assistant professor of Natural Resources Recreation and Tourism within the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. His research interests largely focus on sustainable tourism with a specific interest in the unique natural and cultural resources of tourism destinations. These innate natural and cultural features interest him because he sees the sustainable management and marketing of them as being vital to two of the primary goals of tourism development: (1) the ability to effectively attract tourists and achieve a competitive advantage and (2) having residents that are proud and supportive of the tourism industry within their community. Dr Boley's research has appeared in the Journal of Travel Research, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Management and Tourism Geographies.
Celina Strzelecka
Celina Strzelecka is a doctoral student of cultural anthropology in at University of Wrocław, Poland. Her doctoral research focuses on geometrical representations of time in different cultures. She is also interested and cultural and political discourses of nuclear power plant in Poland.