How Sustainable Are Tourist Destinations Worldwide? An Environmental, Economic, and Social Analysis

Abstract

Sustainable tourism is the idea of managing the negative impacts or potential for serious harm to the economic, environmental, or social elements of a destination, and thus reaching the goals of sustainable development. This research benchmarks the sustainability of 111 tourist destinations throughout the world, using an advanced integration of a two-stage network DEA under the meta-frontier concept, directional distance function, and network-based ranking methods. The empirical outcomes of these analyses clarify that the sources of sustainable inefficiencies are the self-production process and the technology gap among the tourism regions, rather than the capacity of utilizing the input resources or maintaining the production outcomes. The network-based ranking emphasizes the sufficiency and deficiency of each place, and provides a map of reference among destinations. Based on these, the article reports some managerial suggestions, theoretical implications, and future research directions.

Responsible Tourism and Hospitality

“…The authors found that adopting clean technology significantly reduces food waste and improves operational efficiency, highlighting its potential for sustainable waste management. Nguyen et al (2023) conducted an environmental, economic, and social analysis of the sustainability of tourist destinations worldwide. The study revealed that environmental policies, economic development, and social factors all play crucial roles in determining the sustainability of tourist destinations.…”