Local People's View on Tourism in Context of Sustainable Tourism Principles: An Importance-Performance Analysis

Abstract

Considering their central role as stakeholders at destination, local people’s views and active participation in decision-making and implementation processes are important for the sustainability of tourism activities in the area. Therefore, it is of great importance to determine the local people’s attitudes towards sustainable tourism and development. Goal of the current study is to reveal the importance and perceived performance of the local people towards sustainable tourism, in line with the sustainable tourism principles determined by the World Tourism Organization. In order to examine importance that local people give to these principles and perceived performance of their application, Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) method was applied. Data was collected from 389 locals in Demre District of Antalya city in Turkey with the survey technique. According to the findings of IPA, local people reported high levels of importance to all sustainable tourism principles. On the other hand, perceived performance of local people towards application of all the principles, except “protection of biological diversity”, shows low levels. Unique contribution of the current study is in providing the perspective on how local people evaluate sustainable tourism principles and emphasizes the awareness of important and perceived performance differences when it comes to sustainable tourism.