Responsible and Sustainable Tourism: A Comparison of Community Perceptions

Abstract

Responsible tourism (RT) has emerged as a significant means of implementing a procommunity, pro-poor, and sustainable program. As the term is relatively new, it is attracting considerable attention worldwide. However, it is often confused with sustainable tourism (ST) due to sharing similar underlying principles. This article thus endeavors to analyze the theoretical basis of both concepts by examining community perceptions in tourist destinations. A structured survey questionnaire was first administered among 387 residents from four tourist destinations in the Indian state of Kerala. Following the data analysis, it was observed that responsible tourism is significantly linked to sustainable tourism. Furthermore, the former fulfills the objectives of the latter in such a way that rather being different from sustainable tourism, it is a limited version of it. Whereas sustainable tourism is more a theoretical concept, responsible tourism is an action component with more practical implications. Consequently, the findings provide insights for academicians and policymakers into defining and implementing both concepts at various levels. Contribution/Originality: This study offers two contributions to existing discussions on responsible and sustainable tourism: (1) it is unique in its attempt to validate both concepts through community perceptions; (2) it is one of only a few studies to investigate the relationship between the two concepts, which share similar attributes. 1. INTRODUCTION Tourism is connected to sustainability concepts such as pro-poor tourism (Michot, 2010), community tourism

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