**4. Conclusion and recommendations**

This study reviews and synthesises the community participation literature related to rural WHS destinations. Community participation plays a significant role in reviving and sustaining the status of WHSs, leading to economic development and subsequent improvements in the quality of life of local communities [3,7,63]. However, in the context of tourism planning, the community participation literature revealed varying levels of community involvement, ranging from participation in decision-making to involvement in economic activities [29,32,33]. The findings of the current study reveal that the residents of rural destinations prefer to limit their involvement to economic activities to participation in the decision-making processes [19,20,33]. The inscription of a site as a WHS enhances the location's international visibility, thus serving as a magnet for tourism development and the economic development of local communities [8,26]. The support of local residents in conservations programmes, therefore, is important in terms of maintaining the site's WHS status to attract more tourists and increase the range of benefits available to the local community through their continued economic involvement. In addition, the findings in relation to the factors influencing community participation reveal the importance of ability (as a function of awareness and knowledge) and motivation (as related to perceptions and interest) in compelling rural residents toward involvement in economic activities compared to participating in the executive-level decision-making. Moreover, in rural WHSs, particularly in developing countries, the political structure often restricts the participation of community residents to planned economic activities and heritage site promotion, throwing up barriers to their involvement in the decision-making processes [16,26,30]. Therefore, economic involvement is the preferred type of community participation in rural WHS communities, particularly in the developing world. These findings mark a significant theoretical contribution of the present study to the community participation literature. Notwithstanding, this study is also limited by the fact that only existing literature was reviewed to shed light on community participation in the rural WHS context. Case-base rural WHS studies, in developed and developing countries, would go a long way toward clarifying some of the issues identified in the present study.

This study has a number of practical implications for local authorities and correspondence organisations responsible for the management and development of rural WHS destinations. To sustain the development of rural WHS destinations, the local authorities should aim to facilitate the participation of the community. The participation of local residents in WHS conservation and tourism development is critical to future sustainable development. However, based on the results of this review, local authorities should focus on the economic involvement of residents and look to maximise the residents' benefits from tourism to attract further support among the local community for conservation programmes and tourism development. Local authorities should undertake to improve residents' awareness, knowledge, and skills with respect to tourism development, conservation, and the importance of maintaining the WHS status. Such activities would facilitate the effective involvement of local residents. Moreover, by enhancing the positive impacts and mitigating the negative impacts of tourism, local authorities can increase community members' motivation to become involved. Enhancing the perceived positive impact of tourism encourages the community to participate in tourism activities and heritage conservation programmes, whereas the perception of negative effects reduces local residents' participation and support for tourism development. Increasing the number of opportunities for the local community to become involved will entail a review of existing policies, rules, and regulations to ensure the removal of barriers to community participation, employing a more transparent and egalitarian political structure and maximis‐ ing the capacity of communication channels. Local residents will involve themselves in conservation programmes and tourism development only to the extent to why they believe that local authorities and government officials will allow; therefore, maximising what is allowed will invariably benefit plans for gaining the most out of community involvement.
