Since the rise in importance of community-based and sustainable tourism, the concepts of citizen participation, empowerment, and sense of community have emerged as significant areas of study. Active citizen participation has been recognized as a cornerstone of contemporary policies and programs in diverse fields including the tourism domain. Active citizen participation enhances policy control and leadership competence, which are two key ingredients of empowerment. Empowered citizens can contribute to the development of creative solutions and influence policy-making processes in tourism. Citizen participation and empowerment are derived from awareness of citizens' community which they belong. The sociopolitical control scales has been used to test the association between empowerment and citizen participation while sense of community is a key construct for contributing to find the association three notions in influencing policy-making. This study is one of few studies that empirically examine the relationship between citizen participation, sociopolitical control, and sense of community. The empirical results demonstrate: 1) sociopolitical control and sense of community as valid construct in the tourism context; 2) group differences in psychological empowerment and sense of community; 3) relationship among socioeconomic status, sense of community, sociopolitical control, tourism participatory behavior, familiarity of tourism campaign, and perceived impact of tourism policy; and 4) partial mediation effects between variables and sociopolitical control. These results can contribute to the tourism field by providing policymakers and analysts a valid and reliable quantitative tool for evaluating successful policy outcomes. Furthermore, the study provides empirical evidence to tourism policymakers and agencies for evaluating the social outcomes of their programs with focus on community-based programs and initiatives. This approach can be used in concert to pursue sustainable tourism policies and promotion by obtaining strong support and consensus from local communities.
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