Search Results (22)

Based on a comprehensive review of the current research status of ecological compensation both domestically and internationally, combined with field survey data, this study delves into the issue of multi-stakeholder participation in the ecological compensation mechanisms of the Xin’an River Basin. This research reveals that the joint participation of multiple stakeholders is crucial to achieving the goals of ecological compensation in river basins. The government plays a significant role in macro-guidance, financial support, policy guarantees, supervision, and management. It promotes the comprehensive implementation of ecological environmental protection by formulating relevant laws and regulations, guiding the public to participate in ecological conservation, and supervising and punishing pollution behaviors. The public, serving as the main force, forms strong awareness and behavioral habits of ecological protection through active participation in environmental protection, monitoring, and feedback. As participants, enterprises contribute to industrial transformation and green development by improving resource utilization efficiency, reducing pollution emissions, promoting green industries, and participating in ecological restoration projects. Scientific research institutions, as technology enablers, have effectively enhanced governance efficiency through technological research and innovation, ecosystem value accounting to provide decision-making support, and public education. Social organizations, as facilitators, have injected vitality and innovation into watershed governance by extensively mobilizing social forces and building multi-party collaboration platforms. Communities, as supporters, have transformed ecological value into economic benefits by developing characteristic industries such as eco-agriculture and eco-tourism. Based on the above findings, further recommendations are proposed to mobilize the enthusiasm of upstream communities and encourage their participation in ecological compensation, promote the market-oriented operation of ecological compensation mechanisms, strengthen cross-regional cooperation to establish joint mechanisms, enhance supervision and evaluation, and establish a sound benefit-sharing mechanism. These recommendations provide theoretical support and practical references for ecological compensation worldwide. Full article

This article analyzes the application of artificial intelligence in the tourism sector in Lithuania, Latvia, and Sweden. This paper aims (1) to identify the benefits of AI-based digital tools for the operations of tourism organizations, and (2) to identify the challenges in using AI-based digital tools in tourism organizations. An analysis of scientific literature has been carried out and the primary data have been obtained from 17 semi-structured interviews conducted in tourism enterprises of three countries. The survey sampling method used is criterion sampling. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, applying a conventional approach to content analysis using an inductive coding process. The main benefits of AI-based digital tools for tourism organization activities are personalization of services, automation and increased operational efficiency of tourism organization activities, etc. Tourism organizations implementing or already using artificial intelligence in their activities are usually faced with the challenge of ensuring data privacy and security, the high costs of implementing artificial intelligence systems, etc. Full article

The intersection of digitalization and sustainability is reshaping the tourism industry, with digital platforms playing a transformative role in optimizing travel experiences while simultaneously influencing economic inclusivity, labor dynamics, and environmental responsibility. This paper explores how Industry 4.0 technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, blockchain, virtual reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT)—are integrated into digital tourism platforms, assessing their dual impact on sustainability and market structures. The study develops a conceptual framework around five key dimensions: market power and digital dependency, AI-driven automation and workforce transformation, innovation and digital inclusion, sustainability innovations, and data security and governance. While digital platforms enhance personalization, operational efficiency, and eco-conscious travel, they also reinforce economic disparities, monopolization, and regulatory challenges, raising concerns related to SDGs such as SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption, and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions). The study highlights the need for equitable governance frameworks to mitigate risks associated with AI-driven monopolization, algorithmic bias, and data privacy violations while ensuring digital accessibility for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The findings contribute to ongoing discussions on platform economics, digital governance, and sustainable tourism transformation, offering policy and managerial implications for fostering an inclusive and environmentally responsible tourism industry. Full article

The presented paper focuses on the current state and evaluation of the integration of environmental innovations from the perspective of the tourism enterprise sector in Slovakia. The quantitative approach herein was conducted by means of a questionnaire survey for the assessment of perceptions about environmental innovations in 144 tourism accommodation companies regarding their importance, attractiveness, usefulness, and financial consequences. These innovations are essential for enhancing business efficiency and competitiveness despite their high costs and intensive maintenance. Important aspects include energy-efficient technologies, clean production technologies, and resource efficiency, which have reduced costs, enhanced corporate image, and improved environmental management. In any case, most obstacles have been linked to economic factors or the need for specialized training for these technologies. This analytical study, using descriptive statistics, semantic differentials, and the Friedman test, found no significant differences among businesses and a strong consensus on the adoption of these innovations to improve operational effectiveness. This research deepens understanding of how environmental innovations transform tourism businesses and contribute to business efficiency. Recommendations for policy and business practices that may successfully support implementation and ensure long-term benefits are presented. Full article

Adventure tourism offers unique experiences while presenting environmental concerns related to resource consumption and waste generation. Studies integrating circular economy (CE) principles in adventure tourism, particularly in South Africa, are limited. This research investigates the perspectives of managers and owners of adventure Small, Micro, and Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) on challenges hindering the implementation of a CE model and explores how digital technologies can be leveraged to overcome these challenges. The purpose is to gain a deeper understanding of the specific barriers faced by adventure companies in adopting CE principles. The study is rooted in an interpretivist epistemological stance. This study adopts qualitative methodology whereby netnographic tools were used for data collection through 12 online interviews with owners and managers in Mpumalanga. The results present the solutions provided by digital technologies towards advancing resource efficiency in a sustainable and resilient pathway in the adventure tourism industry. By focusing on the perspectives of stakeholders within adventure tourism SMMEs, this research provides valuable insights for a more sustainable and resource-efficient industry in South Africa. The Mpumalanga case study of successful CE implementation and investigation of the environmental impact reduction potential of CE practices in adventure tourism could be beneficial to practitioners and researchers. Full article

The construction industry, business models, and smart cities are recognized as pivotal domains with profound implications for fostering sustainability, prompting extensive research endeavors. However, there remains a dearth of interdisciplinary integration within this sphere aimed at fostering sustainable development. Nevertheless, current studies suggest that research in this area could provide theoretical and practical guidance for the sustainable transformation of society and make a positive contribution to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, this paper aims to utilize an innovative mixed research approach combining macro-quantitative bibliometric analysis with subsequent micro-qualitative content examination based on the SDGs to explore the relationship between BIM and smart cities in promoting a sustainability-oriented business model, which provides a comprehensive understanding of the overall situation and development of research topics in the field and contributes to the improvement of the SDGs. The results show that, during the last 13 years (from the year 2011 to 2023), the period from the year 2011 to 2016 was the initial stage of the field, followed by a rapid growth after the year 2018, of which “BIM”, “Smart City”, “Business Model”, “Building Life Cycle”, “Urban Management”, and “Business Model Innovation” are the keywords representing the current research hotspots. The circular economy model that has been developed since 2021 has contributed to life cycle stages, including “briefing stages” and “procurement stages”. As such, the “whole life cycle”, “strategic urban planning frameworks”, and “sustainable business models” have become future research trends, whilst real-world applications such as “smart tourism”, “e-government”, and “green building” have emerged. Further, the key partnerships of “city managers”, “corporate enterprises”, and “public participation” for smart cities contribute to the achievement of SDGs 8 and 17 in terms of integrating urban information technology and urban infrastructure, policy regulation, knowledge-sharing, improving economic efficiency, and promoting sustainable economic growth. Full article

Taking Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, a typical ethnic border area with rapid tourism development, as an example, this study uses a coupling coordination degree model to quantitatively analyze tourism and urbanization, two subsystems in Xishuangbanna, and measure the level of coordinated development between tourism and urbanization in Xishuangbanna. This study provides a theoretical basis for building famous tourist cities and for improving the urbanization efficiency and level in areas such as Xishuangbanna with abundant tourism resources but insufficient urbanization. The following results were obtained: (1) Xishuangbanna’s tourism plays a strong role in promoting urbanization, and its tourism urbanization response coefficient, tourism industry location entropy, and tourism urbanization level indicator all show clear upward trends; tourism has become a local advantage industry and has a significant positive correlation with urbanization. (2) In the evaluation system for tourism urbanization quality, the weights are ranked in the order of social indicators > economic indicators > population indicators > spatial indicators > eco-environmental indicators; over time, social indicators and economic indicators show clear fluctuating upward trends, population indicators fluctuate greatly, and spatial indicators and eco-environmental indicators fluctuate little. (3) The top five indicators influencing tourism urbanization are the number of the incoming individuals, the number of travel agencies, the number of corporate enterprises in the catering industry, the forest coverage rate, and the number of ethnic minority villages. (4) In the evaluation of the coupling coordination degree, the comprehensive evaluation indicator is low, resulting in an overall low coupling coordination degree of tourism urbanization quality in Xishuangbanna, and three types of coupling coordinated development (i.e., severe, moderate, and mild imbalances) are observed. Full article

Although the realm of sustainable development has been sharply associated with energy savings and a decrease in contamination, the concept deserves a much more comprehensive approach. Sustainable development, as the only respectful and safe way to progress, involves—besides the mentioned rational use of energy and resources—a broad variety of economic, technical, cultural, and behavioral issues. In this context, the total or partial recovery of abandoned singular infrastructure facilities for alternative uses (leisure time activities for human welfare) is to be considered an original, interesting, and efficient approach. In this research, the so-called “El Caminito del Rey” [The King’s Little Path] will be studied as a paradigmatic model of successful achievement. The path is located in Málaga, South of Spain, and was originally built to provide access to a hydroelectric power plant. Due to the construction of new routes, the track and walkways were progressively abandoned. The recovery enterprise was conceived in the framework of circular economy-based planning and with full respect to environmental requirements. The facts and figures that will be presented and analyzed will show that when the project is thoroughly designed and carefully implemented, the rehabilitation of obsolete infrastructure facilities located in natural spaces is suitable, feasible, and profitable. Prudent and rational use of these assets for alternative purposes (human welfare through rural tourism and open-air activities) may be fruitful not only in economic terms but also in environmental, cultural, and social ones. The main objective of the current work is to demonstrate that obsolete abandoned facilities can be rehabilitated into worthwhile amenities that may turn into key factors for the sustainable development of determined rural areas. Moreover, the “El Caminito del Rey” experience could represent a model for similar development projects. Full article

Tourism is the economic sector most heavily influenced by COVID-19, and it has suffered unprecedented losses. The competitiveness and resilience of the tourism industry have recently become a topic of great concern for global stakeholders. A series of ambitious recovery strategies have been announced by countries to rebuild the tourism industry, that aim to make “smokeless industry” more resilient and sustainable. The objective of this study is to evaluate and rank the effectiveness of nine recovery strategies in the post-COVID-19 period for Vietnam’s tourism industry. A combined model of the Best–Worst Method (BWM) and the Group Best Worst Method (GBWM), an efficient tool using the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, is used to rank the tourism solutions. The assessment process is carried out by six stakeholder groups considered decision makers, including tourism operators, enterprises, scholars, employees, residents, and tourists. In the context of Vietnam, the most influential tourism recovery strategy is using innovative tourism business models (ST2), which is a solid step forward in utilizing potential resources, meeting current tourism needs, and adapting to natural changes. The model results reflect that the tourism model’s restructuring is necessary to provide new types of experiences and entertainment suitable for the new tourism context. The findings illustrate that the priority of strategies depends on the perception of decision-makers, levels of involvement in the tourism industry, and local conditions. The study has contributed a theoretical framework for tourism recovery solutions and decision support in the post-pandemic stage. The model can be applied to other countries worldwide in improving tourism performance or assisting in decision-making for similar issues. Full article

The purpose of this research is to determine the efficiency of beekeeping enterprises in Van and Erzincan provinces of Türkiye and to make recommendations to increase production efficiency. A total of 300 well-prepared questionnaires were distributed in the research area, of which 295 were analyzed. In the study, production analyses were performed with and without the bootstrapping technique. Constant and variable returns to scale were found in the estimates of technical efficiency scores using both non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) to produce efficiency scores and a truncated regression model to link the aforementioned scores with the characteristics of honeybee enterprises and beekeepers. The research revealed that cooperative membership and veterinary benefits had a 1% level of importance for income; some cities were found to have negligible beekeeping activity. Education level was also found not to be important. While determining the efficiency limits in DEA with and without bootstrapping, it was determined that 34.3% of enterprises without it had ineffective constant returns to scale compared to 39.5% for those with it. For variable returns to scale, 28.4% without bootstrapping worked ineffectively, while with bootstrapping, 29.4% were found to be ineffective. The study found that the same level of beekeeping can be maintained by reducing costs. In addition to its economic value, honey is an important source of income for the region. Beekeeping and honey production are important agricultural activities for increasing rural development to create new jobs and increase employment. As a form of alternative tourism, rural tourism combined with apitourism and gastronomy tourism and practices are important for the development of the Erzincan and Van provinces. Full article

The subject of this research is related to sustainable tourism and its connection with lifestyle entrepreneurship. The Portuguese business fabric is formed by micro, small, and medium sized enterprises which have emerged in big numbers over the last years, mainly related directly and indirectly to the tourism industry. The discussed issue of this study is whether these companies are a vehicle for sustainable tourism in rural areas. Via a qualitative method, through a comparative case study of 11 businesses, the goal is to evaluate if the lifestyle entrepreneurship initiatives promote sustainable tourism in rural areas, identifying the specific business created and evaluating their growth toward the planned strategies and actions related to internal resources and capacity, as well as marketing. Lastly, the results present the plans made for growth according to the necessary balance among economic progress, environment, public health, and a social context. This study promotes decision tools for entrepreneurs and destination managers as to the practices to be adopted with the goal of sustainable development. Thus, in terms of ecological responsibility, the use of renewable energy through biomass is a very efficient practice because it both produces energy and reduces waste, since the energy production comes from plants and animal waste. Full article

Passenger flow is an important benchmark for measuring tourism benefits, and accurate tourism passenger flow prediction is of great significance to the government and related tourism enterprises and can promote the sustainable development of China’s tourism industry. For daily passenger flow time series data, a passenger flow forecasting method based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and improved quantile regression long short-term memory network (QRLSTM), denoted as CNN-IQRLSTM, is proposed with reconstructed correlation features and in the form of sliding windows as inputs. First, four discrete variables such as whether the day is a weekend and holiday are created by time; then, a sliding window of width 42 is used to pass the passenger flow data into the network sequentially; finally, the loss function of the sparse Laplacian improved QRLSTM is introduced for passenger flow prediction, and the point prediction and interval prediction results under different quartiles are obtained. The application of quantile regression captures the overall picture of the data, enhances the robustness, fit, predictive power and nonlinear processing capability of neural networks, and fills the gap between quantile regression and neural network methods in the field of passenger flow prediction. CNN can effectively handle complex input data, and the improved nonlinear QR model can provide passenger flow quantile prediction information. The method is applied to the tourism traffic prediction of four 5A scenic spots in Jilin Province, and the effectiveness of the method is verified. The results show that the method proposed in this paper fits best in point prediction and has higher prediction accuracy. The MAPE of the Changbai Mountain dataset was 0.07, the MAPE of the puppet palace museum dataset was 0.05, the fit of the Sculpture Park dataset reached 93%, and the fit of the net moon lake dataset was as high as 99%. Meanwhile, the interval prediction results show that the method has a larger interval coverage as well as a smaller interval average width, which improves the prediction efficiency. In 95% of the interval predictions, the interval coverage of Changbai Mountain data is 99% and the interval average width is 0.49. It is a good reference value for the management of different scenic spots. Full article

Tourism and hospitality have been recognized as leading economic sectors globally. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, it was estimated that the tourism and hospitality sector was growing by around 4% each year. Although the economic-efficiency-led hypothesis of the tourism and hospitality sector is strong, there is another perspective related to tourism and hospitality. That is, tourism and hospitality are not as “green” as they were supposed to be. Indeed, this sector is known for its outsized carbon footprint. It is estimated that, if not managed efficiently, the GHG contribution of the tourism sector will grow in the future. Specifically, the hotel business accounts for 1% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), which is huge. Responding to these significant issues, this study investigates the relationship between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of a hotel enterprise and employees’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB). The mediating role of environmental-specific transformational leadership (ESTFL) and the moderating role of green perceived organizational support (GPOS) were also tested in the above relationship. The data were collected by the employees through a self-administered questionnaire. The hypothesized relations were statistically investigated by using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that CSR activities of a hotel not only influence employees’ PEB directly, but the mediating role of ESTFL was also significant. At the same time, the conditional indirect role of GPOS was also confirmed. This study offers different theoretical and practical insights, which have been discussed in detail. Full article

Tourism contributes 10% to global gross domestic product (GDP), yet it generates 5% of all anthropogenic CO₂, while 50 to 60% of carbon emissions are indirectly related to the sector. High levels of poverty afflict rural areas in developing countries, and sustainable tourism based on renewable energy is an ideal approach to generate local development. Our objectives are thus to gauge sustainable tourism’s influence on local development in the community of La Florida, Huaral, Peru and to evaluate the potential of renewable energy (solar and wind power) to propose an eco-efficient business alternative. A non-experimental, quantitative approach was used, in which 265 local residents completed a survey to ascertain their perspectives on the proposal. Moreover, the potential for solar and wind energy was measured to identify sustainable alternatives that residents might incorporate into local ventures. The results demonstrate a relationship between sustainable tourism and local development, as tourism activity enables community members to improve their quality of life and offers them the opportunity to generate new enterprises. Likewise, the assessment of renewable energy potential confirms its feasibility in this area. Full article

The tourism industry can significantly benefit from the blockchain since its implementation can build trust among stakeholders and improve customer satisfaction. However, most of the existing tourism-specified blockchain platforms are single-chains that provide business support for enterprises without guaranteeing transaction information privacy. Besides, these platforms are specified to a single use case and lack interoperability with other platforms to support heterogenous tourism services. This paper aims to address this issue by introducing a multi-chain architecture that utilizes multiple blockchains to enhance processing capability and provide various business services for the tourism industry. The proposed multi-chain architecture improves the interoperability between the activities in different chains by providing functional requirements in practical applications and supports the inter-ledger application. In addition, the private blockchain will be made available to allow users to access the network through central authorization. It also increases the transaction processing capability by distributing multiple tasks across the chains for large-scale applications. To demonstrate the usability and efficiency of the developed approach, a case study on hotel booking is conducted using the blockchain frameworks Winding Tree and Hyperledger Fabric. A comprehensive evaluation experiment is conducted, and the results show the significance of the proposed system. Full article