Understanding residents' empowerment and community attachment in festival tourism: The case of Victoria Falls

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of residents' empowerment, community attachment, wellbeing, and economic benefits on their support of festivals. A sample of 510 residents of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, was used for data collection. The study proposes an empirical model to investigate the impacts of residents' empowerment on their support for festivals and the mediation of the link by community attachment and residents' wellbeing. The results from the structural equation model support all but one hypothesis. Specifically, residents' empowerment fosters wellbeing, community attachment, and support for festivals. Residents' wellbeing mediates these relationships, and economic benefits moderate the mediated model. These findings highlight the importance of psychologically, sociologically, environmentally, and politically empowering the residents in festival host communities. Festival planners, governments, and local authorities are encouraged to communicate the positive effects of the festivals and help to empower the communities to ensure residents' full support. Additionally, they ought to ensure that residents are fully aware of the power they hold and able to use it to their advantage to encourage support for festival development in host communities.