Community Empowerment Under Powerful Government: A Sustainable Tourism Development Path for Cultural Heritage Sites.

Beiming Hu,Furong He,Lingshan Hu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.752051

Abstract

Community participation is the core of sustainable tourism development; however, it encounters obstacles at government-controlled heritage sites in China. This paper examines the status quo of community participation and residents’ empowerment perception through 25 in-depth interviews and 168 questionnaires in the Miao ethnic heritage site of Xijiang Village in southwest China, the findings reveal that: (a) The phenomenon of disempowerment focuses on the political and economic aspects, rather than the social and psychological aspects; (b) Spatial difference affects empowerment perception; and (c) Residents desire more political and education empowerment. On this basis, the present research puts forward a comprehensive empowerment system consists of system, information, and education empowerment which contributes to the theorization of community empowerment between Chinese and Western scholars and provides an alternative path to sustainable tourism development for developing countries’ cultural heritage sites.

Highlights

Community participation is the key issue for tourism development of heritage sites and is a process that is vital to enhance long-term sustainable heritage management (Landorf, 2009)
After the approval of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recommendation on the world heritage convention, community participation is recognized as a fundamental tool in heritage management practices, which may enhance the quality of life and well-being of communities concerned (UNESCO, 2019)
Such research conclusions have been drawn in other similar settings, Abou-Shouk et al (2021) with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) employed to analyze the perceptions of 784 respondents across the three countries and the findings reveal that significantly different effects of women’s empowerment on tourism development and must not ignore socio-cultural facets of empowerment (Aghazamani et al, 2020), Thanks to being given information and knowledge through empowerment, the villagers set up confidence and responsibilities to participate, which has changed their cognition of, emotion for and interaction with community planning, development and themselves (Xu et al, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

Community participation is the key issue for tourism development of heritage sites and is a process that is vital to enhance long-term sustainable heritage management (Landorf, 2009). The participation of local residents in heritage sites improves residents’ sense of belonging, facilitates the development of social networks, makes a positive contribution to the quality of life of local residents and makes heritage site conservation programs more sustainable (Gursoy et al, 2002; Nicholas et al, 2009; Sirisrisak, 2009; Rasoolimanesh et al, 2017). After the approval of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recommendation on the world heritage convention, community participation is recognized as a fundamental tool in heritage management practices, which may enhance the quality of life and well-being of communities concerned (UNESCO, 2019). Community participation loses its support and significance (Tang and Wang, 2017).

Methods

Results

Conclusion