Empowerment beyond inclusion: Uneven impacts of community-based tourism in Vietnam’s mountainous regions

While Community-Based Tourism (CBT) is widely championed for rural development, its capacity to deliver equitable empowerment remains heavily contested. This study empirically evaluates the multidimensional impacts of CBT across economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions in Northwest Vietnam, identifying the structural determinants of its sustainability impacts. Utilising survey data from 211 ethnic minority households, the study employs Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to test the effects of six key determinants: community empowerment, women's empowerment, household capacity, financial access, ethnic identity, and CBT value chain retention. The results reveal a critical decoupling between community level gains and stagnant household level benefits. Crucially, community organisational empowerment emerges as the sole consistent driver across all four sustainability pillars, proving that cultural and environmental assets function as collective goods requiring robust local governance. Conversely, individual household capacities, ethnic attachment, and subsidised financial credit largely fail to produce sustainability outcomes. Furthermore, the study uncovers a profound gender empowerment paradox: while external support elevates women into public leadership, it fails to dismantle intra-household patriarchal structures. The findings conclude that CBT’s sustainability is fundamentally institutionally mediated, requiring policymakers to move beyond symbolic inclusion and unconditional subsidies toward legally empowered, accountable community institutions.