Domestic Tourists' Mindset towards Responsible Tourism Management: A Case Study on Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh

Abstract

In spite of being a significant stakeholder in the sustainable and responsible tourism development and management process, worldwide only a few studies exclusively tried to find out tourists' attitudes towards them. Moreover, they are principally missing in case of developing and least developed countries where the domestic tourism market is more significant than international market. Besides, in Bangladesh, no study exists that tried to discover the domestic tourists' attitudes towards Responsible Tourism Management (RTM) and to its Triple Bottom Line (TBL) components. So, this research was a step to fulfill the recognized gaps, as well as, an initiative to append the empirical findings to the existing RTM literature. After conducting an extensive literature review, this study followed both the exploratory (in-depth interview) and descriptive (survey) research designs to conduct it. Further, this study used Descriptive statistics (Frequency distribution and cross tabulation) and multivariate dependence data analysis technique (multiple regression analysis) to analyze the data collected from the 385 sample respondents using stratified random sampling. Based on the findings, the present study support that, Bangladeshi tourists have positive attitudes to each of the TBL components and to RTM, however, to enhance their attitudes towards RTM and to TBL components, scopes are still available. This study also suggests including tourists' socio- demographic characteristics whilst measuring their attitudes, as their attitudes considerably vary as a result of variation in their socio-demographic characteristics. With the support of and reference to this study, the Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) can work on each of the TBL components to enhance the positive attitudes of Bangladeshi tourists towards Responsible Tourism practices at Cox's Bazar (CB). Moreover, the frameworks of this study also useful to study similar subject areas at other destinations in Bangladesh. This study on CB, Bangladesh also contributes to the RTM literature and minimizes the known literature gap for developing countries.