Residents’ Satisfaction with Tourism and the European Tourism Indicator System in South Sardinia

Abstract

To make sustainable tourism a more concrete and operational concept, many sets of indicators have been proposed by both academics and policy makers. Among the latter, the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS) was launched by the European Commission to monitor tourist destinations at a subnational level. To evaluate the social impact of tourism, the ETIS recommended the administration of a proposed questionnaire to the local residents. We conducted the survey administration of the ETIS questionnaire in an Italian seaside resort. In this paper, we report the main outcomes of the survey and propose their interpretation within the context of some of the theoretical frameworks described in the academic literature referring to the relationship between tourism and host communities.

Perceptions and Role of Tourist Destination Residents Compared to Other Event Stakeholders in a Small-Scale Sports Event. The Case of the FIS World Junior Alpine Ski Championships 2019 in Val di Fassa

“…On the other hand, the study by Deccio and Baloglu [70] shows that the residents' attachment to the community does not determine whether or not they adopt a positive perception of the event's effects on the area. More recently, though not strictly focused on events, some studies have analyzed the satisfaction of residents with respect to the tourist destination and the concept of tourist sustainability that the local brand would like to convey [71,72]. For the purposes of this study, the research of Schnitzer et al [73] is particularly useful in understanding whether the residents' experience (in this case young people) of a minor event can influence the destination's decision to apply for a major event (in this case the Olympic Games).…”

Local residents’ perception about tourism and foreign residents: A Spanish case study

“…Even though numerous works have focused on identifying local residents’ views and attitudes about the impact of tourism in their communities, few studies have assessed the connections between tourism development and community satisfaction (Ko & Stewart, ). Satisfaction represents a valid measure of positive perceptions about tourism, though (Alrwajfah et al, ; Foroni, Modica, & Zenga, ). It is obviously a subjective measure which obviates other more objective variables such as economic, social, environmental or health‐related welfare.…”

Destination Assessment and Certification: Challenges and Opportunities

“…However, it remains unclear whether or not certification schemes influence tourists' perceptions of a given tourism product or destination and if they confer any benefits to tourism businesses or destinations. Thus, questions about effectiveness and, hence, contributions of such schemes to the operationalization of sustainability continue to be raised within the literature [2,3,6,7,19,23,32]. Recent studies have suggested that there are variations in the extent to which certification may benefit or be valued by tourism businesses, let alone by tourists.…”

“…The emphasis on shared responsibility and joint decision-making represents the value attached to stakeholder collaboration in sustainable tourism, whilst concomitantly being a potential weakness within ETIS. This is simply because it does not fully reflect on the challenges of stakeholder collaboration in tourism destination contexts, where differing opinions and conflicts of interest may hamper efforts in such situations [23,35,36]. Challenges of stakeholder participation were reported in a recent study that evaluated the social impacts of tourism in South Sardinia, using the ETIS questionnaire.…”

“…. , local people denounce their lack of involvement in the decision planning, pointing out that stakeholder inclusion in the tourism development process has not been realized" [23] (p. 15). Furthermore, the delineation of a tourism destination as excluding "large areas, i.e., national or regional areas that do not directly manage tourism resources and facilities and engage with stakeholders" [33,34], calls to question the very idea of certifying a destination instead of specific entities within it.…”