Relationship between Participation and Women Empowerment in the Tourism Industry; a Structural Equation Modeling Approach

The Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship on participation in decision making, implementation and benefit with women economic empowerment, psychological empowerment and social empowerment in tourism industry in Zanzibar. Design/methodology/approach: The study was survey, and multistage cluster sampling techniques were employed. The data was collected from 387 respondents using structured questionnaire from nine different wards of Zanzibar. The size and direction of the path coefficients was examined through PLS-SEM Algorithm and the significances of the relationship was examined through PLS-SEM bootstrapping procedure in the Smart-PLS 3.2. Findings: The results indicated that, there is direct relationship between participation in decision making with Economic Empowerment and Social Empowerment. Participation in benefit has significant relationship with Economic Empowerment and Psychological Empowerment. While participation in Implementation has no significant relationship with Economic Empowerment, psychological and social empowerment. Research limitations/implications: In theoretical perspective, the current study used only three dimensions among four dimensions developed from the Cohen and Uphoff participation theory and further tested on female gender only. Practical implication: The study contributes to the limited understanding on how women in Zanzibar community are reactive to various factors including standard of living, social wellbeing and self-confidence or self-employed. Originality/value: The quantitative consolidation of participation dimensions and examining their influence on women empowerment in tourism sector adds knowledge in the body of literature of community development as its rarely contested by the scholars.