Factors affecting the attitude of tourism-destination local authorities towards sustainable planning tools in a networking context: the Balearic Sustainability Network

Abstract

Empirical evidence regarding Local Agenda 21 (LA21) seems to indicate that higher LA21 dissemination is linked to networking. However, it is not entirely clear which features explain the favourable attitude of local authorities towards networks. This research takes a step forward towards filling this gap by studying the variables that are able to create favourable attitude towards participative sustainable planning tools by tourism-destination local authorities in a networking context. We focus on tourism destinations as singularly interesting areas for studying sustainability issues. Our research context is a region in Spain, the Balearic Islands, which was chosen due to its great dependence on tourism and its apparent involvement with LA21 processes. Our findings suggest that favourable attitudes are associated with a mix of variables that reflect the management approach of the promoters, the internal characteristics of the municipalities and the benefits emerging from networking. From a more disaggregated view, more cognitive-related variables (such as prior expertise, purposive benefits and learning) seem to be more important than more affective-related variables (such as entertainment, trust, identification and relations with network promoters) to explain attitudes towards LA21.