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A Fuzzy Evaluation of Tourism Sustainability

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Business and Consumer Analytics: New Ideas

Abstract

For many years the sustainability assessment of tourist destinations has been based on the carrying capacity, which is a measure that takes into account the preservation of a geographical area (by measuring the number of tourists, the visitor flow and the environmental thresholds) along with its tourist fruition (by assessing the quality of the experience perceived by visitors). Unfortunately, its definition lacks clarity, and its dependence upon qualitative variables makes it unable to provide a unique criterion for its assessment.

In this paper we propose a fuzzy approach that takes into account the inherent uncertainty and vagueness of the involved variables to assess a destination’s sustainability, by introducing a fuzzy indicator. Our approach has been applied to the Italian region of Sicily, showing a high versatility that makes its use possible jointly with (or alternatively to) other existing methodologies developed by European and international institutions.

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Acknowledgement

This work has been partially supported by the Italian Government Prin Project #2015XAPRKF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Aziendali e Statistiche, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Joseph Andria

  2. Dipartimento di Economia, Universitá Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, Italy

    Giacomo di Tollo

  3. Dipartimento di Management, Universitá Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, Italy

    Raffaele Pesenti

Authors
  1. Joseph Andria
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  2. Giacomo di Tollo
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  3. Raffaele Pesenti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giacomo di Tollo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering and Computing, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

    Pablo Moscato

  2. School of Electrical Engineering and Computing, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

    Natalie Jane de Vries

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Andria, J., Tollo, G.d., Pesenti, R. (2019). A Fuzzy Evaluation of Tourism Sustainability. In: Moscato, P., de Vries, N. (eds) Business and Consumer Analytics: New Ideas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06222-4_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06222-4_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06221-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06222-4

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