Intermediary organizations as supporters of residents’ innovativeness and empowerment in community-based tourism

Despite the importance of intermediary organizations in promoting community-based tourism, little is known about how different types of social support from intermediary organizations assist residents’ capacity building, such as their innovativeness or empowerment. To address this research gap, this study collected survey responses from 353 South Korean residents participating in a government-supported community-based tourism initiative and examined via structural equation modeling the relationships among social support (i.e. emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal support), resident innovativeness, and resident empowerment. All four types of social support had positive impacts on resident innovativeness but instructional and informational support (i.e. functional support) overperformed emotional and appraisal support (i.e. psychological support). On the contrary, when resident empowerment was considered as an outcome, only emotional and appraisal support were direct positive antecedents. The findings indicated the deviating roles of the four social support types in promoting residents’ capacity building, which policymakers should also take into consideration.