Assessing ecotourism in an Indigenous community: using, testing and proving the wheel of empowerment framework as a measurement tool

ABSTRACT

Many of the issues confronting Indigenous peoples result from disempowered communities. Conversely, where communities are empowered, usually as a consequence of landownership, they are able to actively participate in, and benefit from, economic activities such as tourism. In this study, a framework titled the wheel of empowerment framework is used to demonstrate how the level of empowerment/disempowerment in five dimensions can be measured. The dimensions tested are economic, psychological, social, political and environmental. Indicators to measure the level of empowerment for each dimension were developed in a three-stage research process commencing with semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, followed by focus groups with community members from Coba, a Mayan village located near Cancun in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Appropriate indicators were identified and used to assess community levels of empowerment. Results show that the ability of communities to develop sustainable ecotourism businesses requires support from external stakeholders including governments and the private sector as well as internal stakeholders including the local community and importantly from community leaders. The results also show that empowered communities are able to derive considerable social and economic benefits from ecotourism business ventures and make a positive contribution to the ongoing maintenance of sustainability of their local environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous ecotourism
• measurement
• empowerment wheel
• participation
• rainforests
• Mayan

Acknowledgments

This research was partly funded by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) in Mexico, and complemented with funds from the School of Business and from the Graduate Research School of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. Guidance from Dr Heather Zeppel in the early stage of this research contributed to building the wheel of empowerment framework. Also, thanks to Dr Diego Valencia for his contribution in the review of the methods and results of this paper. This research was also possible, thanks to all the people who participated in the interviews and focus groups during the fieldwork stage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly funded by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) in Mexico, and complemented with funds from the School of Business and from the Graduate Research School of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.

Notes on contributors

Adrian Mendoza-Ramos

Adrian Mendoza-Ramos is a founder member of, and sustainable tourism researcher from, the Mexican NGO Razonatura (www.razonatura.org), an organisation of professionals working in the sustainable management of natural resources. Amongst a range of other activities, he runs a nature-based tour guides training programme so they can comply with national standards.

Bruce Prideaux

Bruce Prideaux is a professor of Sustainable Tourism and director of the Centre for Tourism and Regional Opportunities, Central Queensland University, Cairns campus. He has a wide range of research interests including sustainable tourism, tourism in developing countries, rainforest tourism, marine tourism and climate-change impacts on tourism.