The influence of social support from intermediary organizations on innovativeness and subjective happiness in community-based tourism

This study examines the influence of social support from intermediary organizations on innovativeness and subjective happiness in community-based tourism (CBT). The authors collected data from 236 residents who had participated in the Tour Dure project in South Korea. The analysis, using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), shows that social support from intermediary organizations has a positive effect on the innovativeness of residents. Further, the more innovativeness the residents showed, the more their subjective happiness increased. In other words, social support from intermediary organizations plays an important role in improving innovativeness, and in turn, the subjective happiness of residents. There have been many claims that resident participation is important in CBT, but it has usually been treated as a slogan without offering specific proposals for boosting such participation. This study discovered that the social support given by intermediary organizations to residents plays an important role in innovativeness and subjective happiness. It also shows that it is effective to encourage residents' participation in CBT by offering social support from intermediary organizations.