Beyond Proximity: Geographic Distance, Governance Regimes, and Community Empowerment in Ghana's Ecotourism Landscape

Abstract

George Tandoh and Nicholas Imbeah

Community-based ecotourism (CBET) is widely promoted as a strategy for achieving biodiversity conservation and rural development, yet evidence on how spatial accessibility influences community empowerment remains limited. Existing research has largely examined empowerment as a social or institutional process, with insufficient attention to its spatial dimensions and the role of governance in shaping geographically uneven outcomes. This study investigates the relationships among spatial accessibility, governance, and multi-dimensional community empowerment in two contrasting protected areas in Ghana: The State-managed Ankasa Conservation Area and the locally managed Amansuri Community Nature Reserve. A convergent mixed-methods design was employed, integrating household surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and spatial statistical analyses. Community empowerment was assessed across economic, psychological, social, and political dimensions, while spatial accessibility was evaluated using distance-based analysis, regression modelling, and residual mapping. The findings indicate that communities located closer to ecotourism attractions generally reported higher levels of empowerment, although the observed distance–empowerment relationships were not statistically significant. Spatial patterns and qualitative evidence nevertheless suggest that governance quality influences how geographic accessibility is translated into empowerment outcomes. Communities characterised by stronger participation, institutional engagement, and benefit-sharing mechanisms consistently demonstrated higher empowerment than communities with similar geographic advantages but weaker governance arrangements. The study further reveals that psychological empowerment remained relatively strong across communities, whereas economic and political empowerment were comparatively limited. The study contributes to community-based ecotourism scholarship by demonstrating that empowerment is shaped by the interaction between spatial accessibility and governance rather than geographic proximity alone. Integrating GIS with empowerment analysis provides a novel spatial perspective that can support more equitable tourism planning, targeted community interventions, and sustainable protected-area management.

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