Empowerment and resident attitudes toward tourism: Strengthening the theoretical foundation through a Weberian lens

Abstract

This study expands Perdue, Long, and Allen’s (1990) original model of resident attitudes toward tourism in two significant ways. It first proposes Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality (WFSR) as a way to strengthen social exchange theory. Secondly, WFSR is operationalized by using the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (RETS) as substantive antecedents and the Personal Economic Benefit from Tourism Scale as a formal antecedent influencing resident attitudes. Ten of 14 hypotheses were confirmed, with Psychological Empowerment and Personal Economic Benefit having direct and positive effects on Support for Tourism. Implications include recognition of the importance of tailoring destination marketing and management efforts to empower residents psychologically, socially, and politically.