Power dimensions and influence reputation in tourist destinations: Empirical evidence from a network of actors and stakeholders

There is consensus among scholars and practitioners that planning and marketing of community-structured destinations requires a cooperative approach among numerous different actors. It is alleged that power plays a central role, in building the influence reputation of actors in such a cooperative network and thus is important in planning and decision-making. However, there is little empirical evidence with regard to the dimensions of power in a destination community context. This paper contributes to the understanding of how power is perceived by different individuals and stakeholder groups in an actor’s network of an Alpine tourist destination. s end we identified a relevant network of actors and their individual influence reputations (independent variable) as well as relevant power dimensions (dependent). Multiple and simple regression models of in-degree and out-degree centralities, for the whole network as well as network partitions based on stakeholder affiliation of the actors, provide a differentiated insight into the issue of power in actors’ networks. The results indicate that in almost all of the models, knowledge and process power as a second important variable play a central role in people’s perception of an actor’s influence (out-degree) as well as for one’s reputation as influential (in-degree). The results of the partitioned models show that depending on the stakeholder group the actors belong to, their out-degree as well as their in-degree models differ significantly. Hence, the interpretation of influence and power varies across stakeholder groups and must be regarded as a perceptual and not only a structural concept.