IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/123151.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Exploring the concept of perceived sustainability at tourist destinations: a market segmentation approach

Author

Listed:
  • Sánchez Fernández, Raquel
  • Iniesta-Bonillo, M. Ángeles
  • Cervera-Taulet, Amparo

Abstract

The concept of sustainability as perceived by tourists has rarely been studied and much less considered as a basis for segmentation. This article provides a conceptual framework based on tourists’ perception of sustainability policies at destinations and a multidimensional measure for this construct. An empirical analysis at five Mediterranean destinations validated the conceptual proposal and provided empirical evidence for the potential use of perceived sustainability in segmentation studies. Our findings show the discriminating power of the construct, identifying four latent clusters. Perceived sustainability as a tool for segmentation can help analyze the effectiveness of sustainability strategies and action taken.

Suggested Citation

  • Sánchez Fernández, Raquel & Iniesta-Bonillo, M. Ángeles & Cervera-Taulet, Amparo, 2019. "Exploring the concept of perceived sustainability at tourist destinations: a market segmentation approach," MPRA Paper 123151, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:123151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/123151/1/MPRA_paper_123151.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Banjo Roxas & Val Lindsay, 2012. "Social Desirability Bias in Survey Research on Sustainable Development in Small Firms: an Exploratory Analysis of Survey Mode Effect," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 223-235, May.
    2. Kim, Aise KyoungJin & Weiler, Betty, 2013. "Visitors' attitudes towards responsible fossil collecting behaviour: An environmental attitude-based segmentation approach," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 602-612.
    3. Van de Kerk, Geurt & Manuel, Arthur R., 2008. "A comprehensive index for a sustainable society: The SSI -- the Sustainable Society Index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 228-242, June.
    4. Cernat, Lucian & Gourdon, Julien, 2012. "Paths to success: Benchmarking cross-country sustainable tourism," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1044-1056.
    5. Nickerson, Norma Polovitz & Jorgenson, Jake & Boley, B. Bynum, 2016. "Are sustainable tourists a higher spending market?," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 170-177.
    6. Jesse R. Catlin & Michael Gerhard Luchs & Marcus Phipps, 2017. "Consumer Perceptions of the Social Vs. Environmental Dimensions of Sustainability," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 245-277, September.
    7. Castellani, V. & Sala, S., 2010. "Sustainable performance index for tourism policy development," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 871-880.
    8. Seabra, Cláudia & Dolnicar, Sara & Abrantes, José Luís & Kastenholz, Elisabeth, 2013. "Heterogeneity in risk and safety perceptions of international tourists," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 502-510.
    9. Sungchul Choi & Alex Ng, 2011. "Environmental and Economic Dimensions of Sustainability and Price Effects on Consumer Responses," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 104(2), pages 269-282, December.
    10. Andrea Collins & Andrew Flynn, 2008. "Measuring the Environmental Sustainability of a Major Sporting Event: A Case Study of the FA Cup Final," Tourism Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 751-768, December.
    11. Wayne S. DeSarbo & Kamel Jedidi & Indrajit Sinha, 2001. "Customer value analysis in a heterogeneous market," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(9), pages 845-857, September.
    12. Iniesta-Bonillo, M. Angeles & Sánchez-Fernández, Raquel & Jiménez-Castillo, David, 2016. "Sustainability, value, and satisfaction: Model testing and cross-validation in tourist destinations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 5002-5007.
    13. Lee, Tsung Hung, 2013. "Influence analysis of community resident support for sustainable tourism development," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 37-46.
    14. Juran Kim & Charles R. Taylor & Kyung Hoon Kim & Ki Hoon Lee, 2015. "Measures of perceived sustainability," Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 182-193, March.
    15. van Rijnsoever, Frank J. & Castaldi, Carolina & Dijst, Martin J., 2012. "In what sequence are information sources consulted by involved consumers? The case of automobile pre-purchase search," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 343-352.
    16. Torres-Delgado, Anna & Palomeque, Francesc López, 2014. "Measuring sustainable tourism at the municipal level," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 122-137.
    17. Konuş, Umut & Verhoef, Peter C. & Neslin, Scott A., 2008. "Multichannel Shopper Segments and Their Covariates," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 84(4), pages 398-413.
    18. Dey, Banasree & Sarma, Mrinmoy K., 2010. "Information source usage among motive-based segments of travelers to newly emerging tourist destinations," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 341-344.
    19. Wing Chow & Yang Chen, 2012. "Corporate Sustainable Development: Testing a New Scale Based on the Mainland Chinese Context," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 105(4), pages 519-533, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van Riel, Allard C.R. & Andreassen, Tor W. & Lervik-Olsen, Line & Zhang, Lu & Mithas, Sunil & Heinonen, Kristina, 2021. "A customer-centric five actor model for sustainability and service innovation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 389-401.
    2. Adongo, Charles A. & Taale, Francis & Adam, Issahaku, 2018. "Tourists' values and empathic attitude toward sustainable development in tourism," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 251-263.
    3. Waites, Stacie F. & Farmer, Adam & Collier, Joel, 2024. "Good people good planet: Investigating the interconnection between social and environmental sustainability," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    4. Siti Intan Nurdiana Wong Abdullah & Zaiton Samdin & Jo Ann Ho & Siew Imm Ng, 2020. "Sustainability of marine parks: Is knowledge–attitude–behaviour still relevant?," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(8), pages 7357-7384, December.
    5. Dario Bertocchi & Nicola Camatti & Luca Salmasi & Jan van der Borg, 2021. "Assessing the tourism sustainability of EU regions at the NUTS-2 level with a composite and regionalised indicator," Working Papers 2021:17, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    6. Iniesta-Bonillo, M. Angeles & Sánchez-Fernández, Raquel & Jiménez-Castillo, David, 2016. "Sustainability, value, and satisfaction: Model testing and cross-validation in tourist destinations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 5002-5007.
    7. Cristina Bernini & Silvia Emili & Laura Vici, 2021. "Are mass tourists sensitive to sustainability?," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(7), pages 1375-1397, November.
    8. Yamilé Pérez Guilarte & Daniel Barreiro Quintáns, 2019. "Using Big Data to Measure Tourist Sustainability: Myth or Reality?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-19, October.
    9. Abdul Rehman & Hengyun Ma & Muhammad Irfan & Munir Ahmad & Ousmane Traore, 2020. "Investigating the Influence of International Tourism in Pakistan and Its Linkage to Economic Growth: Evidence From ARDL Approach," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, June.
    10. Huihui Feng & Xingpeng Chen & Peter Heck & Hong Miao, 2014. "An Entropy-Perspective Study on the Sustainable Development Potential of Tourism Destination Ecosystem in Dunhuang, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(12), pages 1-27, December.
    11. Sini Laari & Tomi Solakivi & Anu Bask & Juuso Töyli & Lauri Ojala, 2021. "Unravelling Mickey Mouse: The Effect of Supply Chain Position and Organisational Slack on the Uneven Balance of Sustainability Dimensions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-16, December.
    12. David Bienvenido-Huertas & Fátima Farinha & Miguel José Oliveira & Elisa M. J. Silva & Rui Lança, 2020. "Challenge for Planning by Using Cluster Methodology: The Case Study of the Algarve Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-16, February.
    13. Sainaghi, Ruggero & Phillips, Paul & Zavarrone, Emma, 2017. "Performance measurement in tourism firms: A content analytical meta-approach," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 36-56.
    14. Gabriela Carmen Pascariu & Ramona Tiganasu, 2014. "Tourism and Sustainable Regional Development in Romania and France: an Approach from the Perspective of New Economic Geography," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 16(Special 8), pages 1089-1089, August.
    15. Andersson, Tommy D. & Lundberg, Erik, 2013. "Commensurability and sustainability: Triple impact assessments of a tourism event," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 99-109.
    16. Constantin von Selasinsky & Eva Lutz, 2021. "The Effects of Pro-Social and Pro-Environmental Orientation on Crowdfunding Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-27, May.
    17. Mustafa Ozkan & Kemal Cek & Serife Z. Eyupoglu, 2022. "Sustainable Development and Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty in North Cyprus: The Mediating Effect of Customer Identification," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-13, April.
    18. Juan Ignacio Pulido-Fernández & Yaiza López-Sánchez, 2016. "Are Tourists Really Willing to Pay More for Sustainable Destinations?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-20, November.
    19. Tihana Škrinjarić, 2021. "Ranking Environmental Aspects of Sustainable Tourism: Case of Selected European Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-19, May.
    20. Maja Hosta & Vesna Zabkar, 2021. "Antecedents of Environmentally and Socially Responsible Sustainable Consumer Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(2), pages 273-293, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    perceived sustainability; conceptual framework; multidimensionality; tourist; destination; segmentation; sustainability strategies; latent class analysis; Latent Gold; Mediterranean Region;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:123151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.