Abstract
The literature emphasizes that tourism social entrepreneurs play an important role in the adoption of sustainable strategies to achieve social, environmental, and community development. Yet, there is limited research that aims to understand the relationship between local communities and tourism social entrepreneurship empirically. Building around social exchange theory and Weber’s theory of substantive and formal rationality, this study addresses the following research question: how do local communities perceive the role of tourism social entrepreneurship (TSE) in the development of ecotourism destinations? A total of 362 community employees of two ecotourism organizations in India participated in the survey. Analytically, this study validated the measurement model and tested hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings reveal that the economic benefits and environmental sustainability are the main influencing factors that are appreciated by the communities. However, we found variance in the community perceptions with regard to several factors being studied in the two TSEs we studied. This study recommends that in order to contribute to the development of ecotourism and local communities there is an urge to build strong ties among different stakeholders at the local level.
Highlights
We propose the following hypothesis: H1: Community perception of the economic benefits from ecotourism is a significant predictor of support for tourism social enterprises
This study sought to contribute to the tourism literature by assessing community perceptions of tourism social enterprises and their role in promoting local community development and ecotourism destination development
The paper included SET and Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality (WTFSR) to explain the multiple factors that would aid us in understanding community perceptions of the tourism social entrepreneurship (TSE) role
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The extant research in tourism highlights the importance of tourism social entrepreneurship (TSE) in promoting the social and economic development of local communities while contributing to the development of the tourism industry [1,2]. An increasing number of tourism NGOs undertake social entrepreneurship-related activities in order to promote community development. Social entrepreneurship organizations provide skills, expertise, and networking to local communities. Tourism-based social enterprises that operate in rural areas address the challenges of socio-economic and political concerns and environmental degradation [3]. The travel and tourism industry is considered as one of the key economic sectors in India today by providing a total employment of
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