Evaluating Tourist Destination Performance: Expanding the Sustainability Concept
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. Tourist Destination Performance
Conceptual Foundations of Destination Performance
2.2. Constructing the TDP Evaluation Framework
- (1)
- Economy refers to the extent of tourism’s contribution to regional economic development, mainly through fiscal growth. Based on the literature, tourism’s share of GDP and the average annual growth rate of tourism output were selected as main indicators.
- (2)
- Efficiency refers to the ratio between the inputs and outputs of tourism development [71,72]. Considering the main stakeholders of tourism supply, such as travel agencies, hotels, and employees, this article builds an efficiency evaluation index based upon input and output. On the input side, the traditional investment indicators, namely financial, material, and human resources, according to the degree of association between the elements and tourism development—the performance input index of tourism development will be determined as the number of tourist attractions, travel agencies, hotels, and employees in the tertiary industrial sector [51]. On the output side, tourism revenue and number of visitors are used as the most important measurement indexes. Thus, combining the four input elements (i.e., the numbers of tourist attractions, travel agencies, hotels, and employees) with the two output elements (i.e., tourism revenue and the number of visitors), the following efficiency indexes were derived: the average number of visitors in a tourist zone, the annual number of visitors per travel agency, the annual number of guests per hotel, and the annual per capita output of tertiary industry employees (the annual tourism revenue divided by annual numbers of tourism practitioners).
- (3)
- Effectiveness is a quality dimension that primarily measures the outcomes achieved in relation to destination development goals [71], namely performance results, which also means the outcomes result from tourism development, directly. This is reflected in the TDP evaluation as the quality of the tourist experience, and the efficiency of the industry’s scale of growth. The principal indicators selected are the number of travel agencies, the number of star hotels that are certificated by an authorized organization, the number of attractions, the number of complaints, and the average length of stay.
- (4)
- Equity (social and ecological) refers to the public welfare that tourism brings to destination communities, and measures whether residents benefit from tourism development [70,71,73], as reflected in public facilities and services, ecological quality, and other aspects. This study does not treat environment as a single dimension of performance, which does not suggest that it is unimportant. In fact, environmental performance is becoming increasingly important in destination development [74], which can be translated into a competitive advantage for a destination. To represent this category, the following five indicators were selected for the purposes of this study: number of employees, developed infrastructure as measured by per capita extent of urban paved roads, air quality, the auditory environment or lack of sound pollution, sewage treatment levels, and per capita urban green space.
3. Methods
3.1. Data Normalization and Index Weigh
3.1.1. Data Standardization
3.1.2. Index Weight Calculated by Information Entropy Weight (IEW)
- ①
- calculating , namely the index value weight of the i-th evaluated object among the j-th evaluation index
- ②
- calculating the entropy of the i-th evaluation index
- ③
- calculating the coefficient of variation of the j-th evaluation index.For the j-th index, the smaller the , the greater the variability index value; the larger the , the smaller the degree of variation. The variation coefficient is
- ④
- calculating the weight of the j-th index.
3.2. Constructing the Evaluation Method
3.3. Establishing the Evaluation Level
4. Empirical Test Study
4.1. Study Area
4.2. Data Sources
4.3. Data Analysis
4.4. Influential Factors
4.4.1. Analyzing the Influential Factors of Changing Performance Value
4.4.2. The Influential Factors of Performance Extreme Value
5. Discussion
6. Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Goal Layer | Criteria Layer | Index Layer | Effect | Weight |
---|---|---|---|---|
Performance of tourism destination | Economy (E1) | Tourism revenue share of GDP (%) | + | 0.0409 |
Average annual growth rate of tourism output (%) | + | 0.0920 | ||
Efficiency (E2) | Average number of visitors in tourist zone (per/km2) | + | 0.0828 | |
Annual number of visitors per travel agency (ten thousand Yuan/unit) | + | 0.0394 | ||
Annual visitors of unit star hotel beds (person/bed) | + | 0.0568 | ||
GDP per capita of tertiary industry employees (Yuan/person) | + | 0.0482 | ||
Effectiveness (E3) | Number of travel agencies (unit) | + | 0.0340 | |
Number of star hotels (unit) | + | 0.0690 | ||
Number of tertiary industry employees (person) | + | 0.0528 | ||
Number of scenic spots above Class 2A (unit) | + | 0.0413 | ||
Number of complaints (piece) | - | 0.0400 | ||
Average stay (day) | + | 0.1970 | ||
Environment (E4) | Urban paved roads per capita (m2) | + | 0.0466 | |
Air quality (%) | + | 0.0325 | ||
Urban regional environmental sound level assessment (dB) | - | 0.0620 | ||
Sewage treatment rate (%) | + | 0.0334 | ||
Urban public green space per capita (m2) | + | 0.0309 |
Evaluation Grade Domain | |||
---|---|---|---|
0–0.25 | 0.26–0.50 | 0.51–0.75 | 0.76–1 |
Poor | fair | good | excellent |
Year | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Evaluation value | 0.1609 | 0.3313 | 0.4294 | 0.3629 | 0.5857 |
Grade | poor | fair | fair | fair | good |
Dimensions/Years | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
E1 | 0.0380 | 0.0538 | 0.0418 | 0.0000 | 0.1006 |
E2 | 0.0258 | 0.1012 | 0.1952 | 0.0577 | 0.1072 |
E3 | 0.0528 | 0.1192 | 0.1070 | 0.1306 | 0.1768 |
E4 | 0.0444 | 0.0572 | 0.0857 | 0.1746 | 0.2011 |
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Luo, W. Evaluating Tourist Destination Performance: Expanding the Sustainability Concept. Sustainability 2018, 10, 516. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10020516
Luo W. Evaluating Tourist Destination Performance: Expanding the Sustainability Concept. Sustainability. 2018; 10(2):516. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10020516
Chicago/Turabian StyleLuo, Wenbin. 2018. "Evaluating Tourist Destination Performance: Expanding the Sustainability Concept" Sustainability 10, no. 2: 516. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10020516