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In many ways, the expansion of commercial for-profit, P2P social dining platforms has mirrored those within mobility and accommodation sectors. However its dynamics and impacts have received less consideration to date, with a notable paucity of attention to the hosts of social dining events. The aim of this paper is to address this research lacuna. Through its exploration of the social dining platforms VizEat in Athens and Eatwith in Barcelona, this paper identifies, analyses and compares the social practices of hosts around their social dining events in two key tourist destinations in Europe. Data is gathered through multiple methods from participating in and observing social dining events in each city to interviews with key stakeholders in the P2P social dining process (such as hosts, platform employees and ambassadors). The research reveals how dynamic rules, tools, skills and understandings shape and reshape the performance of hosting social dining events. It exposes tensions and ongoing negotiations between hosts and guests regarding matters of authenticity and privacy, an uneven risk burden between hosts and platforms with regards liability and scant regard for matters of sustainability. As a result there is little alignment between P2P social dining and the goals of sustainable tourism.

This conceptual paper aims at characterising event sustainability from a long-term multi-stakeholder perspective, moving beyond the concept of Triple Bottom Line and event greening. Starting from the premise that sustainability should be understood critically in the wider context of society rather than from a conventional event management lens, the paper focuses on how stakeholders create sustainable value for themselves and for society beyond a specific event. Events should be considered as platforms for value creating systems and, as such, they are enabling actors (individuals and organisations) to share and integrate resources in their own social systems. The adoption of a systemic perspective grounded in Service Dominant Logic allows the authors to conceptualise sustainability as Sustainable Value Creation. Constructs derived from Business Models literature are utilised to analyse the key components of Sustainable Value Creation because they offer insights on the complex process of the creation and sharing of sustainable value focusing specifically on the stakeholders’ activities, relationships and resource exchanges.

The tourism sector is often characterized by precarious working conditions. With the aim of promoting sustainable business practices and addressing labour concerns, many tourism service providers are keen to set and enforce sustainability standards in their value chains. However, there is a contested debate on the local impacts of voluntary standards. This paper focuses on tourism labour and investigates how sustainability standards can contribute to capability building and social upgrading processes at the firm-level. It argues that most research on sustainability standards has analysed the “visible” outcomes of standard implementations while a process-based perspective is largely missing. The paper addresses this gap through a novel approach and makes both theoretical and empirical contributions. Conceptually, it integrates the dynamic capabilities approach into global value chain (GVC) research. This enhances current conceptualisations of capabilities and the understanding of upgrading processes within GVCs. Empirically, the paper investigates the South African standard “Fair Trade in Tourism” through a longitudinal, mixed-methods research design that extended over a period of eight years. The findings show how sustainability standards in tourism can contribute to capability building and upgrading at the firm-level. The paper concludes by arguing that policy makers should better resource local standard-setting organisations., This research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 799041.

Rwanda's Nyungwe National Park is a biodiversity hotspot with the most endemic species in the ecoregion and the highest number of threatened species internationally. Nyungwe supplies critical ecosystem services to the Rwandan population including water provisioning and tourism services. Tourism in the Park has strong potential for financing enhanced visitor experiences and the sustainable management of the Park. This paper explores quantitatively the economic impacts of adjustment in Park visitation fees and tourism demand as a source of revenues to improve Park tourism opportunities and ongoing operations and maintenance. The methods developed in this paper are novel in integrating the results of stated preference techniques with a regional computable general equilibrium modelling approach to capture multisectoral, direct, indirect and induced impacts. Such methods have strong potential for assessing revenue generation alternatives in other contexts where park managers are faced with the need to ...

Integrated sustainability indicators for tourism (ISIT) address tourism as an element of both economic and socio-ecological systems and as actively integrated in multi-level policy-making and planning. This paper aims to review studies of ISIT in peer-reviewed journals with a focus on methodological approaches. By specifically examining ISIT, this study embraces the interdisciplinary nature of both sustainability science and tourism studies. The results are based on a systematic literature review and categorization of the studies’ academic disciplines, methods and organization of indicators. The results reveal that despite being a relatively young area of study, research on ISIT has developed simultaneously across multiple academic disciplines, and is expanding. There seems to be greater interest in developing new methodologies than applying existing indicator frameworks. Most papers refer to indicators thematically and thus discuss tourism separately in the contexts of environmental, social or ec...

Demand for Protected Area (PA) tourism continues to grow, raising concerns for its environmental sustainability. Numerous sustainable tourism guidelines and best practice examples exist for separate aspects of PA regulation and management. However, such efforts are insufficient to reliably and holistically understand how regulation can mediate the relationship between tourism development and PA environmental sustainability. This paper proposes a theory development project, to map the compatibility and interplays among various regulatory approaches, and their consequences for sustainable PA tourism. The project is initiated here by taking the first steps toward a concession-related theory of regulation. The focus on concessions has been chosen because concessions are the most under-researched aspects of PA tourism regulation. Four regulatory aspects are selected and conceptualized in this paper: the approaches to PA planning, the types of monitoring undertaken, the methods of concession allocation ...

Following its 2013 Green Park Plan, the US National Park Service (NPS) has sought to achieve more sustainable operations at park level. However, a history of top-down governance, research aversion, contentious community relationships, and a move towards neoliberal governance has created numerous challenges to operationalising the sustainability agenda. Using comparative case study methodology, this paper approaches sustainability through a five-pillar framework that incorporates the economy, environment, society, good governance and sound science. Data from three very different parks, and from the newly formed Division of Climate Change and Sustainability at Park Headquarters, is presented. Using the National Mall in Washington, DC, Shenandoah in Virginia, and Big Bend in Texas, the paper highlights many successful sustainability initiatives. A number of serious problems remain, however, including lack of funding, the slow working budget cycle, the need for inter-park knowledge sharing, the need f...

This paper examines how environmental resources and costs feature in business models of small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs). Several studies have pointed to the generally positive nature of the relationship between the economic and environmental performance of tourism firms. Yet, although business models act as a vector between these aspects of firm performance, they have been overlooked in sustainable tourism discourse. The paper reports findings from discussion groups of SMTE businesses in South West England during the global economic downturn. Environmental costs and cost control were afforded relatively little importance in terms of value creation; conversely, there was a strong and predictable emphasis on revenue generation. Indirect tactics emerged for dealing with guests’ environmental behaviours which reflected this prevailing commercial logic. Green credentials were routinely de-emphasized, sometimes regarded as liabilities, in a form of greenhushing. Responses were framed...

It is widely recognized that contemporary tourism mobility, notably flying, is incompatible with sustainability goals. Fundamental changes in travel behaviour are required. Research shows that environmental values have little impact on tourists' travel decisions and that voluntary behaviour change is unlikely. Therefore, policies encouraging transitions to sustainable tourism require a deeper and more context-specific understanding of factors influencing current carbon-intensive travel patterns. This paper responds to this need by adopting a social practice perspective to explore the gap year phenomenon, an increasingly popular activity for the British youth, often involving multiple long-haul flights. The social practice approach positions young people's travel decisions as not being simply individual, but shaped by existing conventions, normative expectations and facilitated/constrained by available resources. The paper draws on the findings from a multi-sited ethnographic study in England, whic...

Tourists, workers, and business owners from diverse cultural backgrounds and social positions meet at tourism enclaves. Yet, the spatial layout of most enclaves encourages segregation instead of celebrating and benefiting from this diversity. This paper examines the genesis of enclave tourism boundaries. It proposes boundary-work as a sustainability practice to work out segregating propensities, and transform exclusionary boundaries or make them more permeable. Life story interviews in a Mexican Caribbean enclave revealed segregation's appalling consequences for workers, implicit costs for business owners, and the personal involvement of tourism actors in historical struggles over boundaries. This analysis constitutes a first step to untangle exclusionary propensities and render tourism boundaries more workable from a sustainability governance perspective. The paper explains the need for sustainable tourism research that identifies opportunities to: (1) address traumatic experiences born of discriminatory...

The special issue dedicated to events and sustainability is introduced here. We provide synopses of the papers, preceded by an introductory essay that examines how event studies has approached the relationship between events and sustainable development. Existing work too often assumes that sustainability means reducing negative environmental impacts with other aspects of the sustainability paradigm neglected. And whilst social issues have risen to prominence in events research generally, this work is usually considered outwith sustainability debates, and without considering environmental and economic interrelationships. We argue that event scholars should examine how events might contribute to sustainable development, rather than merely exploring how individual events could be made more sustainable. Accordingly, there needs to be further work addressing how events might change attitudes and behaviours by promoting sustainable lifestyles, communities and technologies. Following this discussion, we justify the focus on social sustainability in the special issue, clarify what this actually means, and question whether this is always the most appropriate way of framing research on the social impacts of events. Given the timing of the special issue, there is also a short review of how the coronavirus crisis affected the events sector, and what the implications might be for sustainability.

In this paper I provide a critical discussion of gender intersectionality and its relevance for sustainability in tourism, focusing on the intersection between gender and race. I argue that Black women in tourism suffer from a double negation caused by both sexism and racism, but this has received little acknowledgement or critical discussion in studies of sustainable tourism. However, an intersectional approach to gender is vital as it rejects reductionist views of women’s experiences in tourism and the attendant power relationships that such an approach (re)produces. I argue that it is through a critical understanding of the importance of an intersectional approach to gender that we can move closer to achieving equity in the development of tourism. My discussion is theoretically underpinned by critical race theory (CRT) and the related logics of Black feminism which I use to highlight the (re)presentation of Black women in tourism. Methodologically I draw on the storytelling technique popularised in CRT to analyse a fictional film – ‘Heading South’, to explore Black women’s elision as agentic beings as well as their (re)presentation as vulnerable and submissive. I argue that such (re)presentations of Black women in tourism popular cultural narratives have material implications for sustainable development.

The paper is based on territorial intelligence (TI) and its application to the sustainability of tourist destinations. The TI focus is viewed as being suited to dealing with the problems of tourist...

Women’s tourism entrepreneurship has been identified as fundamental to meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of both ‘gender equality’ and ‘decent growth and economic growth’ but neither entrepreneurship nor sustainability are gender neutral in the tourism industry. Therefore, further research is required into how gender influences sustainable entrepreneurship, providing insights for tourism entrepreneurship policy. In response to a prevalent essentialism in much of the literature, this paper adopts a post-structuralist framework, alongside a mixed-methods approach, to understand the complex role of gender and sustainability at different stages of entrepreneurship. The initial focus is on a survey of 539 tourism students (women and men) which analyses the latent and nascent entrepreneurship stages, while 19 interviews with established tourism entrepreneurs provide further insights into these issues. The analysis focusses especially on the individual characteristics of risk, personal attitudes to entrepreneurship and behavioural control. While broad gender differences are observed, notably in societal perceptions of risk aversion, there is also considerable blurring of the approaches of established entrepreneurs in particular to sustainability and entrepreneurship. If entrepreneurship is to enhance sustainability, policy needs to account for the non-essentialised gendered dimensions that inhibit and enable sustainable tourism entrepreneurship.

This paper investigates the food waste phenomenon concerning Chinese cruise passengers holidaying on international cruise ships. Data were collected through participant observation, casual conversa...

This paper examines the role of community-based ecotourism within the developing market dynamics of the blue economy. The blue economy has become synonymous with generating wealth from ocean-relate...

In this paper, we examine two dimensions of social interface as key contributors to spiritual capital in the coastal community of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. These include an extended set of interac...

This paper examines the non-linear effect of tourism on environmental degradation in 31 African countries. It also determines the moderating effect of tourism on the impact of economic growth on en...

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how critical discourse analysis (CDA), an under-utilised methodological approach, can be used to critically question the dominant, hegemonic discourses surrounding sustainable development and sustainable tourism development. The Waterberg Biosphere Reserve in South Africa provides the study context. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the framework for review, sustainable development is an integral part of this framework. This research study examines three SDGs in particular: discourses surrounding SDG 4 (quality education), SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) and SDG 15 (life on land). Interviews (n = 35) were conducted, in South Africa, with multiple stakeholder groups. CDA techniques were applied to data analysis to examine the sustainable development/sustainable tourism discourses attached to the SDGs under review. Neoliberal discourses linked to the economy, the environment, and a sustaining of the tourism industry through top-down planning and unequal power distributions emerged. Conclusions reflect both upon the opportunities utilising a tool such as CDA presents, along with the limitations to take account of when applying it. CDA applications which explore SDGs by listening to the voices of the poor are suggested as one avenue for further research.

Transport policy agendas have long sought to bring about more sustainable transport at tourism destinations. While there are examples of successes, it remains unclear what inroads have been made towards creating a sustainable transport future. Policy directions have evolved over a number of years and in many tourism destination contexts it is far from clear what a desirable transport future looks like. When translated to implementation, the aims of initiatives can be unclear and baseline measures inconsistent, making success difficult to judge. This paper analyses how sustainable travel has been implemented in practice at a destination level. The focus is rural tourism and data are derived from a specific case, the New Forest National Park, UK, where a wide range of transport initiatives have been implemented since the Park’s designation in 2005. The study adopts a social practice theory perspective. Data are derived from a visitor survey, interviews and observations. It finds there is scope to improve sustainable transport provision at destinations through understanding visitor practices, but limited scope to influence meanings associated with visitor travel and travel skills. Policy meets the needs of some visitors more than others.

This paper reports on the first study to critically examine the sustainability of whale-watching practices along the entire migratory range of a pelagic baleen whale species, the gray whale (Eschri...

This paper examines stakeholder engagement in the collaborative marketing of community-based tourism enterprises (CBTEs). The study explored the various collaborative marketing approaches shaped by...

Many tourism corporate responsibility (CR) programmes require the support of guests, yet little attention has been paid to the design of strategies to encourage guests’ adoption of responsible behaviours. Research in the areas of tourist interpretation, social marketing and sustainability marketing has examined aspects of this issue across a range of situations. This paper uses a systematic critical literature review of these areas to identify 10 major themes that have been addresses in the research. The evidence presented in these 10 themes was then used generate guidelines for the effective engagement of guests with CR programmes. Strategies based on the 10 guidelines are embedded into a holiday scenario to illustrate their application. The importance of extending CR strategies beyond the immediate confines and concerns of individual tourism businesses is also discussed.

A prerequisite for the sustainability of protected areas in Africa is the meaningful inclusion of local populations in conservation and tourism. This has been demonstrated in numerous destinations where communities receive benefits from tourism in terrestrial protected areas, they are more inclined to view it positively and conserve natural resources. This paper presents a review of revenue-sharing literature, and also an analysis of the evidence of quantified benefits accrued by local communities in Africa through institutional arrangements to share revenue or finance development projects by (1) protected areas, and (2) tourism enterprises. The review highlights the challenges of revenue sharing as well as four key components of successful revenue-sharing systems: (1) economic benefits must be clearly identified and communicated, (2) benefits are appropriate to the scale of threats to biodiversity, (3) involvement of communities in decision-making on the structure and process of the distribution ...

Summer music festivals that involve a few days of camping have often been linked to sustainability agendas. Yet relevant studies have so far overlooked how these events can themselves serve as experiments in less resource consumptive living. Building on a wider interest in the cultural evolution of cleanliness norms, this paper explores how attendees come to use water in personal washing at two UK festivals. Through survey, observation and interview research, it examines how current festival goers respond to the disruption of their usual washing regimes, paying particular attention to how a combination of social and infrastructural cues serves to encourage the emergence of a temporary new cleanliness culture. Doing so highlights the value of seeing human resource consumption as a matter of dynamic collective convention more than fixed personal preference since these respondents were seen to embrace a new relationship with washing that was otherwise deemed unthinkable. This leads to a broader discussion of how visitor needs and the social world are most usefully studied by both future festival organisers and the wider field of sustainable tourism research.

Can distinctive natural assets in tourist destinations be artistically recreated and used to improve destination image and attract more visitors? This paper analyses the formation of the tourist image based on artistically recreated local nature icons, and shows how those images can enhance the overall destination image. It focuses on the island of Lanzarote, a destination with its development based on promoting an environmental image founded on the creation of a network of multifunctional, high-quality art, culture and tourism centres exhibiting artistic recreation of its unique environmental assets. The methodology utilizes a questionnaire (n = 453) structural equations modelling approach in which the overall image of the destination is directly dependent on the image of the environmental conditions and indirectly influenced by the image of the artistically recreated centres. Results show that the destination's image is significantly grounded on the image of the art, culture and tourism centres ...

Recent policy from the European Union has attempted to justify social tourism initiatives on the basis that they lead to a more sustainable tourism industry. However, the majority of latest research in the field has been focused on the benefits for participants, with the addition of some evidence on the economic impacts of such programmes on destinations, which have pointed towards sustainability outcomes including: a longer tourism season, more even spread of demand, and longer periods of employment for tourism workers. Yet there is a lack of direct evidence linking such programme to these outcomes. This paper aimed to explore this important disconnect between policy assumptions and evidence-based outcomes through an analysis of the deseasonalising effects of the Spanish social tourism programme for older people. The research found that this programme does have an effect on the seasonal nature of employment and economic activity in most regions studied, but that the huge volume of demand from international tourists in the high seasons masks the quantitative effects in the regions with the highest seasonal concentration of international tourists. Recommendations for policy and practice in sustainable tourism are made that are transferable to many countries and regions that adopt social tourism programmes.

This paper identifies sustainable initiatives reported by “sustainability-champion” hotels in the Dominican Republic, while contrasting them against the views of key stakeholders. We adapt and apply Hart and Milstein's Sustainable Value Framework, and complement it with a Critical Management Studies approach. Our analysis relies on a mixed-methods approach (non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis, as well as thematic and content analysis). Findings indicate that most hotels are engaging more actively in present-oriented strategies such as pollution prevention (especially, the international hotels) and in product/service stewardship. However, in the future-oriented strategies, hotels owned by local investors show higher commitment to both clean technology and innovation, and to the sustainability vision (as the firm's growth path). In addition, although the views of multiple stakeholders show a clear acknowledgment of the hospitality industry's sustainability efforts (particularly regarding educa...

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis paper examines the capacity of the London (2012) Olympic Ambassador volunteer programmes to create a sustainable tourism legacy. It contributes to the literature on event legacies, particularly the role of volunteers promoting tourism in their home destination. Using an exploratory inductive approach, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted, in 2012 and 2013, with managers of all 11 Ambassador volunteer programmes associated with London and the 10 other regional venues that hosted London Olympic and Paralympic Games events. These show that volunteer Ambassadors enhanced tourist experiences during the Games through the Ambassadors’ pride in their home city, enthusiasm and local knowledge. However, although the Ambassador programmes had aspirations to create a sustainable legacy, in the form of a pool of experienced volunteers to support future events and further tourist visits, this was severely constrained by cuts in local government budgets. The Government Olympic Executive provided a coordinating role leading up to the Games, but neither they nor the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games provided practical assistance for legacy development. This was a missed opportunity to channel the enthusiasm of mega-event volunteers into further volunteering to promote tourism.

This paper examines the discourses of authenticity and ethics used among adventure tourists regarding the use of the natural environment. In one case, full-time traveling rock climbers use their dedication to the sport and annual visits to the Red River Gorge as evidence for their authoritative voice on ethical climbing practice. While they identify the growing numbers of leisure climbers as a problem for sustainability, many also take up temporary employment as guides and are directly involved in the introduction of new climbers to the area. In another case, two groups of wilderness enthusiasts – “ADK 46ers” and “Summit Stewards” – lament the environmental and social impacts of other recreational users in the Adirondack Park. Despite being visitors themselves, Summit Stewards and 46ers use their sense of place and knowledge of Adirondack history and ecology to substantiate their authority as purveyors of ethical practice. In both cases, senses of responsibility are inspired by senses of place, but are articulated through notions of authenticity and used as justification for ethical authority. While validating their presence in these outdoor spaces, the use of such rhetoric also minimizes their own impacts yielding further tensions among user groups.

There have been numerous previous attempts to develop indicator systems of sustainability in tourism destinations, but fewer in terms of territorial governance. The present article addresses the design of a System of Territorial Governance Indicators for Tourist Destinations. The proposed system is based around the roles of the public administration, tourism businesses and the local community. It enables the incorporation of the territorial governance perspective into sustainability and gauges destinations’ evolution over time, whilst also allowing any planning and management problems that require improvements to be easily detected. The paper presents a case study: Conil de la Frontera (Andalusian Atlantic seaboard, Spain). Forty-three indicators are used in a multicriteria decision analysis support method (scoring) with the five sub-system Analytical Hierarchy Process: quality of participatory process; effective policy tools and planning controls; trust in local government; tourism business secto...

This paper examines the perceptions toward volunteer tourism from the viewpoint of Bahamian Family Island residents with a specific focus on cross-cultural understanding as an outcome. Cross-cultural understanding reflects the idea that there is a greater opportunity for exchange between tourists and residents as a result of volunteer tourism. Utilizing social exchange theory (SET), this research examines whether residents’ perceived benefits, positive impacts, negative impacts and support for volunteer tourism activities predict their support for cross-cultural understanding. Additionally, this study reveals factors contributing to residents’ motivation to participate in volunteer tourism activities within their community. A mixed-method research design that employed face-to-face interviews and quantitative surveys revealed eight major themes: Community Involvement, Empowerment, Sustainability, Education, Dependency, Neglect of Community Needs, Community Involvement and Communication. Multiple re...

This paper investigates perception of self and others by hosts and guests, which may be critical for sustainability of a destination receiving tourists with different cultural backgrounds. Specifically, the study investigates self-perception of hosts and reciprocal perception between hosts and guests on several service personnel characteristics using importance and performance analysis. Thus, a triple lens of hosts’ evaluation of self, hosts’ evaluation of the guests, and hosts’ evaluation by the guests is involved in a multi-cultural tourism experience context. Results report differences between the lenses, hosts’ self-evaluation being harsher than guests’ evaluation of hosts. Suggestions are provided for destination marketing and management organizations to design effective tourism experiences for both hosts and guests for a more sustainable gaze between hosts and guests.

This paper contributes to the comparative tourism sustainability debate in the context of mountain tourism destinations. It is based on a published three-dimensional Mountain Destination Innovation Model (MDIM) which claims that tourism development depends on a destination's innovation levels, and is subject to different conditions in a variety of important destination environments (using that term in its broadest sense), including sociocultural, natural, political, legal and technological. The authors comparatively analyzed Austrian, Slovenian and Swiss mountain destinations, which are located in small countries in the Alpine region, and that makes their environments, innovation levels and stages of development relatively easy to compare. The analysis used 88 managers’ replies to a 72 element questionnaire employing both objective and subjective measures about performance with regard to MDIM dimensions. The findings confirm differences in the stages of tourism development, in innovation levels, a...

Indigenous tourism is a global phenomenon, encompassing a range of complex, multi-layered issues. The foci of Indigenous tourism research are multifaceted, reflecting a plethora of stakeholders with differing perspectives and values about the direction, development and sustainability of the sector. The academic literature consistently highlights the need for a more comprehensive understanding of Indigenous tourism and, specifically, one that takes into account the interests and values of its stakeholders. This paper provides a global overview of Indigenous tourism development and its international and national institutional links, concomitantly identifying and examining the trajectory of scholarly interest in Indigenous tourism from 1980 to 2014. An analysis of 403 published journal articles is supplemented with the perspectives of Indigenous tourism researchers. The results reveal that sustainability issues underpin and shape a substantive proportion of published Indigenous tourism research to date. The challenge now is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Indigenous tourism from the perspective of Indigenous stakeholders, approaching its complexity in an iterative, adaptive and flexible style, and with affected stakeholders involved in the research process, knowledge creation and its outcomes. This is both an ethical imperative and a pragmatic approach to ensure the outcomes of research facilitate the sustainability of Indigenous tourism.

Indigenous tourism products, attractions and activities can offer a point of difference for tourism destinations, and consequently the role of, and opportunities for, Indigenous people in providing these tourism experiences have been recognised increasingly by government and industry alike. This paper reviews and discusses the factors influencing successful Indigenous tourism development and provides a global comparison of best practice to inform future decision-making processes in achieving sustainable Indigenous tourism development. Data was derived from interviews with key government and non-government organisations, and Indigenous tourism organisations and operators were analysed as a means of critically engaging with the sustainability problematic of Indigenous tourism development. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of international case studies focusing on Indigenous accommodation provision was carried out to complement the research, as were observations during site visits. By offering a ...

Debates surrounding the human impact on climate change have, in recent years, proliferated in political, academic, and public rhetoric. Such debates have also played out in the context of tourism research (e.g. extent to which anthropogenic climate change exists; public understanding in relation to climate change and tourism). Taking these debates as its point of departure, whilst also adopting a post-structuralist position, this paper offers a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of comments to an online BBC news article concerning climate change. Our analysis finds three key ways responsibility is mitigated through climate change talk: scepticism towards the scientific evidence surrounding climate change; placing responsibility on the “distant other” through a nationalistic discourse; and presenting CO2 as “plant food”. The implications of these ways of thinking about climate change are discussed with a focus on how this translates into action related to the sustainability of tourism behaviours. In do...

In the context of sustainable tourism development, there are many studies about the exchange process between residents and tourism, yet this issue is practically unexplored with respect to the political environment of tourism. Therefore, this paper introduces and posits that the political environment is a necessary enabler for implementing sustainable tourism. The authors extend the established three-pillar sustainability concept by adding in the political dimension. Then they surveyed how residents' positive and negative perceptions of tourism impacts determine their satisfaction with life in the tourism destination and thus their support for tourism in their community. The model was empirically tested within the context of the long-established Alpine destination of Bled in Slovenia. The findings confirm the importance of the political environment and question the sustainability of Bled's tourism development. It is suggested that the community has relatively weak destination governance due to the underdeveloped political environment. The survey expands and deepens the tourism sustainability debate by adding in the political environment and how it relates to the emerging growth of research on destination governance. The proposed model can be adapted and applied to any destination in order to improve its governance, including the implementation of sustainable tourism development.

This paper introduces an approach to assessing the sustainability of tourism that takes into account the progress made towards greater sustainability, as well as the current level of sustainability. The Vectorial Dynamic Composite Indicator is based on the goal programming technique. This composite indicator has two components (static and dynamic). The first provides a static assessment of the destination in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. The second allows us to analyse the evolution recorded by the destination from a period taken as a reference to the measurement period. In order to facilitate the use of the vectorial indicator, we define a graphical tool: the Sustainable Tourism Evaluation Chart. The definition of the composite indicator is completed by setting guidelines for its use obtained from a comparative empirical study focused on some of the main European destinations.

Tourism revenue sharing (TRS) has become a popular strategy for integrated wildlife conservation and rural development in Africa. In Rwanda, 5% of tourism revenue is invested annually in communities adjacent to protected areas. However, the conservation impact of the TRS strategy has been challenged. Previous studies have revealed structural constraints of TRS, which partially explain TRS shortfalls. The TRS application is complex and needs deeper understanding of both conceptual and structural constraints. In this paper, we examine local perceptions of TRS, and use the Sustainable Livelihoods framework to conceptually understand the livelihood capability, equity and sustainability constraints of TRS at Volcanoes National Park (VNP). Results suggest that TRS has had minimal conservation impact due to acute food insecurity and limited livelihood capabilities among the poorest residents in proximity to VNP. This is exacerbated by several TRS structural constraints, such as the association membership...

Tourists' travel decisions can be influenced by appropriate policies that seek to encourage them to choose travel plans leading to more sustainable tourism practices. Based on using conventional cognitive decision-making models, most current policy recommendations employ market-based economic incentives (e.g. taxes). This paper employs a dual emotional-cognitive decision-making model to represent tourists' choices. This framework allows comparing the efficacy of taxing emission levels against non-market sustainability policies including: (1) environmental information labelling; (2) emotional communication messages, and (3) limiting time pressure marketing practices. A field experiment (N = 509) was used to test the effectiveness of both market- and non-market-based sustainability policies in reducing overall CO2 emission levels by affecting destination choice. It found that the sensitivity of the choice decision to price is overestimated if and when emotions are not considered in the choice contex...

Given tourism's growing emissions and contribution to environmental change, the positive potential of behavioural interventions, and especially social marketing, has increasingly become a focus for sustainable tourism and mobility research. This paper uses the lens of social marketing to investigate the capacities of tourism researchers to contribute to sustainable tourist behavioural change. Several key and interrelated issues are identified: the nature of socio-technical systems and regimes, understanding what constitutes a successful behavioural intervention, the role of theory and belief systems in interventions, and the potential role of upstream social marketing in policy learning and system change. In the case of social marketing, the essentially political nature of engaging in communications on sustainability is also highlighted. This has implications for the social marketing knowledge base on which sustainable tourism behaviour research draws, such as the value of political marketing and psycholo...

Virtually all destinations seek to increase tourist numbers, pursuing economic maximization strategies. Considerably less attention is paid to optimizing existing tourist systems to create more profitable, stable, resilient and potentially more sustainable entities. While aspects of tourist expenditure, average length of stay and seasonality as three key destination management variables have received considerable attention in the literature, focus has usually been on the identification of “profitable” tourism markets by considering observed patterns of spending, length of stay and vacation timing. Building on such earlier studies, this paper focuses on flexibilities in these parameters: could tourists have spent more, stayed longer or visited during a different season? Perceptions of destination expensiveness as a potential deterrent to visitation were also addressed. Based on a sample (n = 1914) of domestic and international tourists in the Swedish cities of Kalmar and Stockholm, data were collected in face-to-face interviews using questionnaires. Results indicate considerable potential to optimize the Swedish tourism system with regard to all variables studied, while also providing new insights for destination management in the context of economic resilience. Results also indicate the need for researchers everywhere to have detailed market knowledge if they are to persuade the industry to change its sustainability behavior.

This paper creates a conceptual model that helps explain the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting behaviour of cruise lines in the context of institutional theory. It presents findings from an analysis of 50 cruise lines' websites and sustainability reports and discusses the findings within this conceptual context. The study investigated cruise line reporting on commitments to specific CSR goals, the extent of reporting on initiatives contributing to those commitments and the extent of reporting on progress towards those goals. The analysis indicates limited use of formal international reporting guidelines, an almost complete absence of third-party assurance of reported information, and unclear presentation of information on websites, failing to specify time frames and the scope/source of information. Although most cruise lines reported on commitments, fewer reported on specific initiatives, and still fewer provided meaningful assessments of their impacts or performance. Environmental issues an...

Sustainability is a concept that continues to evolve and perplex in tourism, one of the world's largest industries. Effective new theories and practices are constantly explored so as to incorporate sustainability into tourism frameworks. Due to their focus on participation processes, integration of resources, and responses to specific needs and contexts, ecomuseum principles can be very useful for the development of sustainable tourism. This paper examines the potential of using the principles of ecomuseology to support sustainable tourism development. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach involving local expert stakeholders at the case study site, the Rupununi region of Guyana, South America. The findings from this research suggest that the principles of ecomuseology possess considerable potential to support sustainable tourism development in the Rupununi and potentially other destinations internationally. In particular, this study illustrates how ecomuseological principles can be used to manage her...

Anthropogenic climate change is a wicked problem, requiring fundamental behavioural and technological responses now, in the Anthropocene, a term denoting the current era of human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth. Travel and transport policies are key to effective responses, confronting both leisure and business travellers, including academics. This paper explores in detail the factors that promote or suppress academic travel, examining institutional policies which frame academic mobility practices at three New Zealand universities; University of Otago, University of Auckland and Victoria University of Wellington. It finds evidence of little congruence between sustainability statements, with their wide discourses on environmental sustainability, and the institutional policies governing academic mobility. Three overriding themes emerging from the analysis are presented: hollow words (describing a lack of meaningful commitment to sustainability, with disconnections between ...