Ecotourism and sustainable development: an empirical study on consumer perceptions[Ecotourisme et développement durable: étude empirique sur la perception des consommateurs]

To understand the contribution of ecotourism to the achievement of sustainable development, it is necessary to understand its origin, its evolution and itsprinciples (Tardif, 2003).The interest of this confirmatory study lies in the analysis of the perception that consumers have of the two concepts, ecotourism and sustainable development, in order to analyze their profiling, their determination and the constraints that prevent them from travelling in an ecotourism context.On the theoretical level, our paper provides a presentation of all the empirical works that mark out the literature in the framework of analysis of the perception of ecotourism and sustainable development by tourists, on the methodological level, we conducted our study through a questionnaire administered to examine the perception of consumers, it is a representative sample of 200 consumers who have travelled at least once a year.Based on the results of the empirical study, consumers show a favorable behavior towards responsible travel and perceive ecotourism as an economic, social and environmental panacea.