Beyond economics: the role of empowerment in shaping conservation justice through rural nature-based tourism

The purpose of this paper is to add to the understanding of how tourism shapes residents’ perceptions of justice in conservation policymaking. By weaving together Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality with spillover logic, the paper offers a richer conceptualization of how the economic and non-economic benefits of tourism such as empowerment can be harnessed to improve perceptions of justice in conservation policies. We employ partial least squares structural equation modeling (SMART-PLS) on a dataset of 1,312 usable questionnaires from rural Polish residents living nearby Natura 2000 areas, to examine whether economic benefits and non-economic benefits (psychological, social, and political empowerment) derived from rural nature-based tourism, improve residents’ perceptions of Natura 2000 conservation justice within distributive and participatory domains. Both economic and non-economic benefits influence perceived Natura 2000 justice within the distributive domain. However, results show that perceived economic benefits from rural nature-based tourism had no effect on how rural residents perceived participation justice in Natura 2000. In contrast, non-economic benefits associated with empowerment all influenced perceptions of participation justice. Results suggest conservation practitioners and tourism managers can leverage the empowering benefits of rural nature-based tourism to influence resident perceptions of justice in conservation policies.