A systematic scoping review of sustainable tourism indicators in relation to the sustainable development goals

Abstract

Sustainable tourism indicators (STIs) are an integral element of tourism planning and management. This study systematically reviews the research contributions on the development of STIs based on four criteria including: i) the relevance of the STIs to the sustainable development goals (SDGs); ii) governance; iii) stakeholders involved; and iv) the distinction between subjective and objective indicators. A search of Scopus indexed journals published up to April 2018, yielded 97 papers for examination. The findings demonstrate the lack of direct attention to the SDGs in those papers published after their launch in 2016. However, the majority of the SDGs and their targets have indirectly been covered in the reviewed papers. The results revealed that, among the sustainability themes of economic growth, social inclusion, environmental protection, and governance, the STIs studies tended to overlook the dimension of governance. The findings showed that residents are the most engaged stakeholder group, and tourists the least engaged as compared with government and businesses. The results also indicated that more attention is afforded to objective compared to subjective indicators. The findings also demonstrated that much of the focus is on European countries rather than the Global South which is the major focus of the SDGs.

Keywords:

• Sustainable tourism indicators (STIs)
• sustainable development goals (SDGs)
• governance
• stakeholders
• objective and subjective indicators

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to extend their appreciation to the Ministry of Education, Malaysia to fund this paper under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS), 2019 (Grant no. FRGS/1/2019/WAB12/TAYLOR/02/1) that makes this paper possible.

Notes on contributors

S. Mostafa Rasoolimanesh

S. Mostafa Rasoolimanesh is an Associate Professor the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Events of Taylor’s University. His research interest areas contain sustainable tourism, community participation, and residents’ perceptions toward tourism development. He has published widely in top tier tourism journals. Mostafa serves as a member of editorial board of several reputed international journals.

Sundari Ramakrishna

Sundari Ramakrishna is a Senior Lecturer at Taylors’ University, Malaysia, with 21 years of working in conservation of natural resources in a non-governmental organization setting. Her particular interest is applying sustainability and green economy concepts in natural resource management with emphasis on remote communities and Indigenous Peoples. She has carried out various community based projects in Malaysia funded by the development aid agencies and international foundations such as UNDP, DANIDA, OxfamNovib, Toyota Foundation and Rufford Foundation. She has several publications, editors of three books and numerous conference proceedings.

C. Michael Hall

C. Michael Hall is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Docent, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland; and a Visiting Professor in the School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. He has published widely on sustainability, regional development, tourism, food and wine, and global environmental change.

Kourosh Esfandiar

Kourosh (Korey) Esfandiar is a PhD candidate in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University, Australia. Korey's primary research interests are entrepreneurship, social marketing and sustainability in the hospitality, recreation and tourism context. His studies for the PhD degree focus on social psychological investigations of people’s pro-environmental binning behaviour during nature-based tourism and recreation activities in a national park context.

Siamak Seyfi

Siamak Seyfi is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography within the EIREST (Interdisciplinary Research Group for Tourism Studies) at the University of Pantheon-Sorbonne, France. Using primarily qualitative and mixed methods his research interests are sustainable tourism, cultural tourism, political ecology, power and the environment.