FROM A LINEAR TO A COMPLEXITY-INFORMED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABLE TOURISM INDICATOR SCHEMES
Creators: name: CRABOLU, GLORIA
Publisher: name: University of Surrey
Year: 2021

description: Agenda 21 emphasised the need to monitor sustainable development by using indicators. Sustainable tourism indicators (STIs) have acquired popularity in recent years with various monitoring schemes being widely used by tourism destinations. They are often promoted as instrumental tools that guide policymakers in making evidence-informed decisions to improve a destination’s sustainability performance. However, limited data exist on the impact they are actually having at destinations. The theories traditionally used to analyse their use fail to confront the complex dynamics affecting sustainable tourism destination management and policymaking. Scholars and practitioners have thus developed a reductionist view of STI schemes that fully contrasts such complexities. Therefore, a greater understanding of such dynamics is required to investigate how STI schemes are contributing to creating systemic change at destinations.
description: Based on these premises, this research aimed to identify the complex interplay of factors occurring during the implementation of STI schemes at tourism destinations and to develop enabling conditions that could maximise their influence in creating systemic change. It used a novel complexity-informed methodology to produce Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), that captured and visualised the various patterns of interactions between factors in the system and allowed to develop the enabling conditions. The research was conducted over two research phases. In phase 1, a zoom-in lens was taken to identify these dynamics at one single destination with experience in implementing STI schemes and identify accordingly the enabling conditions aimed at maximising their influence. In phase 2, a zoom-out lens was used to conduct a cross-European destination analysis to identify the same dynamics and enabling conditions at a larger scale. In this way, the two research phases allowed to scale up the findings from a single destination to a wider context.
description: The CLDs provided evidence that implementing STI schemes can spark a series of positive dynamics that go beyond the production of indicator data and the implementation of indicator-based policies. It demonstrated how STI schemes can be the catalyst for fostering dialogue, stimulating a process of continuous learning, creating connections amongst stakeholders, developing stronger networks, bringing destinations into a spiral of funding opportunities and contributing to a cultural change in defining tourism success. At the same time, the CLDs provided evidence that STI schemes are less impactful when negative dynamics are present in the system. From the two research phases, negative dynamics were identified stemming from implementing STI schemes with a mechanistic approach that does not account for all the complexities affecting tourism destinations. This study proposes enabling conditions that aid STI scheme designers, promoters and implementers embrace such complexities and make STI schemes more influential in sustainability improvement. As such, the research contributes to knowledge, methodology and practice on sustainable tourism governance and complexity science.