Project title
Responsible tourism management for sustainable development of local community – Across countries’ insight from Malaysia and Japan
Research Unit
Primary investigator
Co investigators
Project period
2024/5/10 ～ 2025/3/31
Project summary
The tourism industry is one of the fastest-growing economic sphere in Malaysia and Japan. Given a wealth of literatures assessing the sustainable development of tourism at various scales, sustainability is still regarded as value-laden and ambiguous due to contextual differences, thus sustainable development of local community needs to be understood through the lens of responsible management. Accordingly, this project seeks to explore more indicators of responsible tourism management and examine the inter-relationship among those indicators that influence the sustainable development of local communities from both a macroscopic and microscopic views.
Activity and results reports
This research project aims to better understand how stakeholders perceive responsible tourism and sustainable tourism development in their local communities. Kuching city (Malaysia) and Shirahama town (Japan) have been selected as the research targets. 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews have been conducted in Kuching and Shirahama. The detailed interview questions are below.
Part 1: Responsible tourism development
- Do you think there is any difference between responsible tourism and sustainable tourism? (more than 1500 words)
○ If yes, we ask how the participant understands responsibility and sustainability in tourism.
○ If not, we ask why the participant thinks responsible tourism and sustainable tourism are the same. - To develop tourism, which stakeholders should be involved (and why)? (more than 1500 words)
○ Through this question, we intend to know how the participant understands the role of community. In this regard, community should be treated as “partner”, but not “target”. - Explain what roles each of these stakeholders should be responsible for. (more than 1500 words)
○ We aim to ask who is responsible for what, because when we are talking about “responsible”, “WHO” must come first.
○ Also, we need to ask what responsibility should be fulfilled during the travel, because responsible tourism treats travel as “action/behavior”, but not “goal”. - 4. Based on your experience, how can we develop a responsible tourism destination/business for the betterment of people and planet? (from triple bottom line perspective). (more than 1500 words)
○ This question aims to ask how different stakeholders can collaborate with each other, for example, reliability, priority, the situation of destination. - Could you share with us any experience or examples of responsible tourism practices? (more than 1500 words)
○ We encourage the participants to share their personal stories about responsible tourism practices. The story could be positive ones or negative ones.
※The rationale behind these questions is that we focus on practical actions rather than ideas or concepts, who is responsible for what rather than goals (like SDGs), context and priorities rather than what is globally important, and how we use tourism for the common good rather than how tourism uses us or dictates actions.
Part 2: Sustainable Tourism Development
- How do you feel about tourists' behavior and awareness impact the local community?
⇒ For example, whether tourists are respecting local culture and the environment. - How does the local tourism industry benefit the residents? Is there a possibility that tourism-related activities might widen social inequality in the local community?
⇒ For example, through job creation or profit sharing within the community.
⇒ For example, wealth disparity caused by the tourism industry or local residents feeling alienated as their area becomes a tourist destination. - How do you feel the local tourism industry contributes to sustainable economic growth?
⇒ For example, securing long-term revenue sources or revitalizing local small and medium-sized enterprises. - Has the development of the tourism industry led to diversification of the local economy? What risks do you think could arise from over-dependence on the tourism industry in the local economy?
⇒ For example, collaborations with non-tourism industries or efforts to prevent economic concentration in tourism alone.
⇒ For example, economic vulnerability or income fluctuations due to seasonality. - 5. How does the local tourism industry manage the sustainable use of tourism resources?
⇒ For example, preventing overuse of resources, setting appropriate usage limits, and designating protected areas.
Currently, we are doing the interview data analysis and preparing the paper submissions to International Journal of Tourism Research, and Journal of Sustainable Tourism.
