Building Member Loyalty in Community-Based Tourism: The Roles of Individual Competence, Interpersonal Communication, Teamwork, and Member Satisfaction

Abstract

This study aims to examine the effects of personal ability, personal communication, and teamwork on personal loyalty through the mediating role of personal satisfaction in the management of Wethan Wonderland Thematic Tourism Village, Surabaya, Indonesia. A quantitative explanatory research design was employed using a saturated sampling technique involving all 35 community members as respondents. Data were collected through structured questionnaires and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. The findings indicate that personal ability has a positive and significant effect on both personal satisfaction and personal loyalty, while personal communication significantly influences personal satisfaction but does not directly affect personal loyalty. Conversely, teamwork has no significant effect on either personal satisfaction or personal loyalty. Furthermore, personal satisfaction positively influences personal loyalty and mediates the relationship between personal ability and personal loyalty, whereas it does not mediate the relationships between personal communication, teamwork, and personal loyalty. These findings imply that managers of community-based tourism destinations should prioritize competency development and strategies to enhance members' satisfaction in order to strengthen long-term loyalty. The novelty of this study lies in developing an integrated mediation model that explains the relationships among personal ability, personal communication, teamwork, personal satisfaction, and personal loyalty within the context of community-based tourism management, which has received limited attention in previous studies.