Development and validation of the new resident empowerment through Tourism Scale: RETS 2.0

Abstract

This study developed a new version of the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale - the RETS 2.0 by integrating two new dimensions of empowerment – economic and environmental empowerment – that the original RETS left off. The RETS 2.0 also abbreviates the original RETS to three items per a construct, reducing response burden, and opening up space for measuring different antecedents and outcomes of empowerment. The RETS 2.0 was empirically tested and validated in the small island destinations of Boa Vista and Sal, Cape Verde following Churchill’s (1979) and Rossiter’s (2002) three-stage mix-method scale development approach. After demonstrating convergent validity, nomological validity was demonstrated by all dimensions being significantly correlated with support for tourism. However, in the test of predictive validity, only psychological, economic, and environmental empowerment were found to be significant predictors of support for tourism. The RETS 2.0 is proposed as a holistic and parsimonious five-dimension scale that assesses resident’s empowerment towards sustainable tourism development