Addressing the threats to tourism sustainability using systems thinking: a case study of Cat Ba Island, Vietnam

Abstract

Tourism is a dynamically complex system. Planning for sustainability is therefore difficult because past system behaviour is often not a good indicator of future behaviour. Despite this, tourism planning is mainly based on forecasting methods that rely on historical data to predict future trends with the assumption that tomorrow's world will be much like today's. To properly manage dynamically complex systems it is necessary to understand the underlying system structures that influence current as well as future system behaviour. This is the domain of systems thinking, which is not a forecasting method, rather a method used to understand the feedback mechanisms that influence system behaviour over time. This study describes the link between tourism development and systems thinking theory, and uses this to identify underlying systems structures likely to influence tourism development and sustainability within Cat Ba Island, Vietnam. We show that current policies promoting rapid tourism growth on Cat Ba Island are likely to be fixes that fail due to unintended consequences that ultimately undermine sustainability. To ensure sustainability, the policy focus must switch from growth to planning for limits to growth before tourism carrying capacity is undermined, which could ultimately lead to tourism decline.

运用系统思考解决对可持续性旅游业的威胁：越南吉婆岛的案例研究

旅游业是一种动态复杂的系统。因此计划一种可持续性的旅游业发展是很困难的，这是因为以前的系统行为通常不能很好地启示未来行为。尽管如此，旅游业的计划仍旧主要建立在预测方法上，而这种预测方法是依靠历史数据，并假设未来世界与现在相似，由此预知未来走向。为了更好地操作这复杂的系统，我们有必要理解影响现在的根本系统结构和未来系统结构。这是系统思考的主干，这并不是一种预测方式，而是一种方法，用来理解一直影响系统行为的机制反馈。这个研究描述了旅游业发展和系统思考理论之间的关联，并且利用这个关联识别有可能影响越南吉婆岛旅游业的根本系统结构。而这种影响包括旅游业发展和可持续性。我们的研究表明，现今促进吉婆岛旅游业迅速发展的政策很有可能是失败的，这是由于最终破坏可持续性的未意识到的结果。若是要保证可持续性，政策的关注点必须要从发展转变成一种计划，而这种计划是在旅游业自带的能力被破坏之前限制其发展，因为这种破坏最终会导致旅游业减缓发展。

Keywords:

• dynamic complexity
• feedback loops
• systems
• sustainable development

关键词:

• 动态复杂性
• 反馈圈
• 系统
• 可持续性发展

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the University of Queensland and the International Foundation for Science (IFS) for financing this research. We would also like to thank the Provincial Government of Hai Phong City, the Cat Hai District People's Committee and Cat Ba Biosphere Reserve Office for their invaluable assistance and collaboration in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

University of Queensland; International Foundation for Science (IFS).

Notes on contributors

Thanh Mai

Thanh Mai has recently obtained his PhD, which examined tourism development on Cat Ba Island, Vietnam. His research interests include systems thinking, system dynamics and sustainable tourism development.

Carl Smith

Carl Smith is a senior lecturer in system thinking and system dynamics. His research interests are systems thinking, system dynamics, risk assessment and decision analysis.