This article advances the case for ethnography as a critical methodological and ethical approach in sustainable tourism research and practice. By exploring and critiquing the current use of ethnography in sustainable tourism, the paper follows a thread that traces the key “tensions,” “challenges” and “opportunities” of this approach. Along this thread, this paper introduces the ten studies in this Special Issue and outlines six key realities that tourism researchers must navigate when considering ethnography as a methodological approach, namely institutional/neoliberal; disciplinary and epistemological; colonial and decolonial; technological and post-pandemic; representational and publishing; and ontological and anthropocentric. For each of these realities, this work offers pathways for future research and ethnographic praxis. Overall, this Special Issue seeks to advance ethnographic conversations in sustainable tourism that move beyond human-centred framings. It embraces post-humanist and more-than-human perspectives that expand the methodological and epistemological horizons of tourism research by accounting for the entanglements of humans, non-humans, and environments that co-produce tourism worlds.

Tourism is vulnerable to climate change, traditionally viewed as passively bearing environmental risks. However, can proactive climate governance transform this vulnerability into development opportunities? This study leverages China’s nationwide “Climate Adaptation Pilot Policy” as a quasi-natural experiment. Using panel data from 278 prefecture-level cities spanning 2010–2022, we employ a Difference-in-Differences approach with comprehensive robustness checks. Our findings offer four key insights. First, the pilot policy significantly enhances urban tourism development, generating an economically meaningful average increase in tourism revenue for pilot cities—an effect that holds across a battery of validity tests. Second, the policy strengthens tourism competitiveness through two distinct pathways: substantive improvements in ambient air quality and the transmission of credible government green signaling. Third, policy benefits are unevenly distributed, with stronger effects in cities endowed with superior tourism resources. Fourth, well-developed tourism infrastructure significantly amplifies policy effectiveness. Together, these findings provide empirical evidence for the tourism co-benefits of climate governance, illuminating how cities can leverage proactive climate action to cultivate sustainable tourism.

Tourism and hospitality organizations invest heavily in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, yet employee turnover rates persistently outpace other sectors, suggesting disconnect between CSR design and retention outcomes. Drawing on attribution theory and signaling theory, this study investigates how internal CSR, directed toward employees, and external CSR, directed toward the community, help reduce turnover. Using survey data from 131 exhibition industry workers who reported retrospective employment histories, we employ recurrent-event survival analysis and regression analysis to test direct and mediating pathways. The findings indicate that internal CSR consistently reduces turnover, and that the integration of internal and external CSR creates a synergistic effect that further enhances retention. External CSR influences retention indirectly through affective commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Internal CSR affects retention more directly. The results offer practical implications for tourism managers seeking to design CSR initiatives that strengthen long-term employee retention.

Overtourism is an increasing global concern, particularly on islands where growth pressures intensify ecological sensitivity. The Galápagos Islands in Ecuador exemplify this challenge, having experienced a 260% increase in tourist arrivals over two decades. Despite conservation-orientated legal frameworks, tourism growth has exacerbated social inequities, strained infrastructure, and intensified resource use. Scholars are increasingly advocating for a paradigm shift beyond growth, yet there is a lack of empirical research on how to access or facilitate such paradigms. This study addresses this gap using participatory systems mapping workshops complemented by 50 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders across the Galápagos. Using the iceberg model as an analytical framework, findings reveal how governance fragmentation, human–nature divides, inequitable investment, and disjointed communication function as underlying system structures sustaining growth-orientated outcomes. Analysis of stakeholder mental models shows divergent perceptions of growth and its management, shaping the legitimacy of policy responses. By collectively transforming system maps toward desired futures, participants identified key leverage points, including enhanced collaboration, participation, transparency, and accountability. Ultimately, findings reveal how the use of creative systems-thinking methods can not only model complexity but also enable participants to “dance with systems” and access and articulate deep paradigms essential for any regenerative transformation.

One of tourism’s most persistent paradoxes is that we harm places we love by visiting them. This contradiction is well illustrated by the case of Antarctic tour guides, who live with a moral dilemma around the conflicting nature of their work. Although they overwhelmingly report strong concern for Antarctica, they repeatedly engage in behaviour that harms it (i.e. travelling there). In this mixed-methods study, we aim to understand the psychological mechanisms (moral disengagement mechanisms) used to resolve the cognitive dissonance arising from this contradictory behaviour. We collect qualitative data (semi-structured interviews with Antarctic tour guides) and analyse it using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (thematic analysis and co-occurrence analysis). We identify 13 novel mechanisms of moral disengagement and three overarching justification narratives that are constructed through complex combinations of mechanisms. Theoretically, the study contributes: (1) the first comprehensive mapping of moral disengagement mechanisms in tourism, (2) several novel mechanisms of moral disengagement, and (3) a deeper understanding of how mechanisms of moral disengagement interrelate. Our results can be used by tourists, practitioners, and policy-makers as a tool to identify disengagement from morals in tourism discourse, and to hold the tourism industry to account on ethical issues.

Against the backdrop of global tourism expansion, tourists’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB) is critical to alleviating destination environmental pressure, yet existing research prioritizes static factors while neglecting the dynamic variable of travel pace. Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study explores the impact of travel pace on PEB via two scenario-based and two field experiments. Results show that slow-paced travel promotes PEB more effectively than fast-paced travel, with a more pronounced effect on low-effort PEB—verified by both self-reported intentions and objective behaviors. Resource perception serves as the mediator: slow pace boosts resource perception to facilitate PEB, while fast pace reduces it to inhibit low-effort PEB. Tourism activity type and destination context moderate this pathway by regulating resource consumption and recovery, respectively. These findings reveal the heterogeneous impact of travel pace on tourists’ PEB, fill the research gap of dynamic contexts and PEB, and provide practical insights for destinations to guide tourists’ PEB via pace optimization and resource management.

Tourism destinations increasingly face complex, interconnected crises that challenge adaptive capacity and long-term sustainability. Although resilience and agility have received growing attention in tourism research, their interaction within destination-scale Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) remains under-theorized. Drawing on CAS theory, this study develops a scenario-informed conceptual approach that reconceptualizes crisis agility as a system-level initiating mechanism within urban tourism destinations. Using five illustrative crisis scenarios applied to a hypothetical destination (CityTourSim), the study examines how disturbances propagate across interconnected subsystems and how agility-related capacities activate recursive dynamics of sensing, coordination, reconfiguration, and learning. Based on cross-scenario pattern abstraction, the paper proposes an integrated framework linking crisis response to adaptive learning dynamics. The Agile Destination Crisis Response Framework (ADCRF) connects crisis characteristics to subsystem vulnerabilities and agility triggers, while the Tourism System Agility Loop (TSAL) conceptualizes feedback dynamics through which agile responses shape resilience development over time. The study argues that agility functions not merely as reactive flexibility but also as a governance-mediated initiating mechanism that influences resilience trajectories and sustainability outcomes. By theorizing agility, resilience, and sustainability as recursively interacting processes, the paper advances destination-level CAS scholarship and provides a process-oriented lens for adaptive tourism governance under systemic uncertainty.

Food insecurity is rising across European cities, although urban tourism continues to expand. This juxtaposition reveals ongoing tensions in how cities pursue economic growth while ensuring equitable access to food. Drawing on Rotterdam as an illustrative case, this study examines how food, tourism, and community resilience intersect within an advanced capitalist urban context. Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, we analyse local policy documents, organisational websites and stakeholder interviews to explore how meanings and silences around food access, tourism development, and resilience are discursively constructed. Our findings show that while policy agendas foreground health, sustainability, and economic competitiveness, they often overlook agency, justice, and systemic food inequality. Tourism actors express strong ethical commitments to local sourcing and community wellbeing, yet these intentions remain weakly embedded in structural frameworks. Paradoxes emerge as food is celebrated for authenticity and destination branding, even as grassroots food initiatives struggle for visibility and support. Nonetheless, opportunities for transformation exist in emerging collaborations and post-growth visions that treat food and tourism as interconnected systems. We argue that aligning tourism planning with justice-oriented food system governance can strengthen community resilience and support more sustainable urban futures in the advanced European cities.

For people with disabilities, employment remains a challenge due to widespread discrimination, especially in hospitality. Social marketing, which uses traditional marketing techniques for social ends, may help address this stigma, especially considering the current digital opportunities. This study examines online social marketing communication actions of the Spanish ONCE Foundation and Ilunion Hotels, internationally recognised for their inclusive CSR practices designed to improve labour inclusion and enhance sustainable tourism. Using Dual-Process Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the paper analyses message framing (positive/negative appeal), its impact, and relationship to social media engagement. Qualitative content analysis was combined with descriptive statistics and econometric regression models. Thus, all the communication actions analysed generally helped promote their labour inclusion, with significant social media impact and engagement. Positive appeal was typically more effective at driving engagement, although negative appeal generated more discussion and visibility. Therefore, dislikes may influence traditional engagement measures without truly reflecting campaign success simply by eliciting controversy or resistance. Previous studies highlighted a lack of specific research on social marketing, disability and tourism. This paper fills this gap, offering insights into how to build a more sustainable future aligned with the SDGs and strengthening the inclusive image of hospitality companies.

While corporate digital responsibility (CDR) is of growing importance, its regulation within the tourism industry remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of CDR regulations on firm stock returns in the tourism industry. Using an event study methodology, the research finds that CDR regulations generate positive abnormal stock returns, indicating that investors perceive such policies as value-enhancing. This positive market reaction is, however, less pronounced for firms with higher environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, suggesting that a strong ESG record acts as a buffer against regulatory shocks. Furthermore, a high degree of digital transformation amplifies this mitigating effect. This reveals that investors perceive the ESG commitments of digitally mature firms as more credible and robust, enhancing their ability to translate these commitments into market-recognised strengths. The study contributes to the literature by providing valuable insights into how investors react to CDR regulation and deepens the understanding of the interplay between CDR, ESG and digital transformation in the tourism industry.