Community involvement for sustainable heritage tourism: a conceptual model

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore why and how to involve community stakeholders to achieve sustainability in heritage tourism operations. Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual model and three propositions are created based on stakeholder theory and the social capital perspective. Findings – The study highlights the challenges facing heritage tourism operators and recommends that these organizations focus on inter-stakeholder group collaboration, participative decision making, responsibility and benefits sharing, and building an institutional power structure to involve hosting communities for sustainable operations. Practical implications – Instead of approaching from the traditional philosophic perspective at the overall societal level, community involvement is studied at individual organizational level to provide more specific recommendations on how tourism companies can empower and involve community stakeholders. Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to synthesize the constructs of organizational motivation, community empowerment, community involvement, and sustainable tourism operations in an integrated model to explore their relationships.