Women’s empowerment and support for sustainable coastal tourism: dual pathways through job embeddedness, place attachment and perceived benefits

Purpose This study aims to examine the influence of women’s empowerment on support for sustainable tourism development in Vietnam’s South-Central Coast. It emphasizes the mediating roles of job embeddedness, place attachment and perceived personal and community benefits to provide a clearer explanation of the mechanisms through which empowerment translates into pro-sustainability orientations. However, the identified relationships are interpreted as associations rather than causal effects. Design/methodology/approach A structured survey was administered to 639 women employed in key tourism sectors, including hotels, restaurants, travel agencies and community-based cooperatives. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling was used to assess both direct and mediated relationships among the constructs. Empowerment is treated as a perceived construct, reflecting women’s subjective perceptions rather than structural power relations. Findings The results reveal that women’s empowerment exerts significant direct and indirect associations with support for sustainable tourism through two pathways: a work-related pathway via job embeddedness and personal benefits, and a community pathway via place attachment and community benefits. While the community benefits pathway is statistically significant, its practical importance is comparatively small. The structural model explained 61.7% of the variance in women’s support for sustainable tourism, indicating that empowerment and its mediating mechanisms capture the majority of key factors shaping sustainability-related perspectives. Originality/value By integrating empowerment theory with conservation of resources theory and place attachment theory, this study proposes a dual-pathway framework linking empowerment to both occupational and community mechanisms. The findings refine prior theoretical assumptions by showing that empowerment exerts much stronger effects through occupational pathways than through community benefits. This differentiated pattern highlights the relative magnitude of effects and cautions against overinterpreting community benefits. This contributes to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of how empowerment shapes support for sustainable tourism.