Complexity science: an alternative world view for understanding sustainable tourism development

Abstract

Tourism research has generally taken a reductionist approach and has not effectively understood tourism as a stakeholder within a complex system (CS) of stakeholders. As a result, interpretations of sustainable tourism development (STD) are highly focused and sector-specific, thereby limiting understanding of the complex inter-relationships between tourism components and other components within a system. This paper explores complexity science as an alternative paradigm to understand why STD is problematic. It is argued that a new world view is required to understand the unpredictable world in which tourism operates. Complexity science and the associated chaos theory offer an alternative paradigm for viewing and understanding tourism phenomena. Viewing underlying influences on a CS in terms of the characteristics of complexity science, including the edge of chaos, strange attractors and conflict provides greater understanding of the system in which tourism operates. The second part of the paper discusses a framework, adapted from complexity science characteristics, to identify the complex inter-relationships between stakeholders with political, environmental, economic, social and cultural interests in an urban river context, the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia.