Empowerment and resident attitudes toward tourism: Strengthening the theoretical foundation through a Weberian lens B. Bynum Boley a,⇑ , Nancy G. McGehee b , Richard R. Perdue b , Patrick Long c a University of Georgia, United States b Virginia Tech, United States c East Carolina University, United States article info Article history: Received 21 February 2014 Revised 13 June 2014 Accepted 11 August 2014 Available online 3 September 2014 Coordinating Editor: Robin Nunkoo Keywords: Empowerment Resident attitudes toward tourism Sustainable tourism Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality Social exchange theory abstract This study expands Perdue, Long, and Allen’s (1990) original model of resident attitudes toward tourism in two significant ways. It first proposes Weber’s theory of formal and substantive rationality (WFSR) as a way to strengthen social exchange theory. Secondly, WFSR is operationalized by using the Resident Empowerment through Tourism Scale (RETS) as substantive antecedents and the Personal Economic Benefit from Tourism Scale as a formal anteced- ent influencing resident attitudes. Ten of 14 hypotheses were con- firmed, with Psychological Empowerment and Personal Economic Benefit having direct and positive effects on Support for Tourism. Implications include recognition of the importance of tailoring des- tination marketing and management efforts to empower residents psychologically, socially, and politically. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction While there have been hundreds of studies on resident attitudes toward tourism over the last 30 years (Nunkoo, Smith, & Ramkissoon, 2013), gaps in the literature remain. One of the most significant gaps pertains to the measurement and application of power, a central theme within http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.08.005 0160-7383/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Bynum.Boley@warnell.uga.edu (B.B. Boley), nmcgehee@vt.edu (N.G. McGehee), perduerr@vt.edu (R.R. Perdue), longp@ecu.edu (P. Long). Annals of Tourism Research 49 (2014) 33–50 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Annals of Tourism Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures