HomeLuz y Sabervol. 11 no. 1 (2017)

AN EVALUATION OF THEORETICAL ROBUSTNESS OF DESTINATION SUSTAINABILITY IN TOURISIM

Sunny Sun | Rob Law

 

Abstract:

Maintaining destination sustainability has been gaining attention from academic researchers over the past three decades, and it remains a popular issue in the recent five years. This topic is of great importance because of its potential benefits in improving the life quality of local communities, accelerating economic development, and passing down cultural values to the succeeding generations. Sound ideas often have strong theoretical foundations; nevertheless, limited studies have examined the theoretical robustness of this topic. Hence, this study first retrieved 15 recently published articles (i.e., from 2013 to 2016) from toptier hospitality and tourism journals and then evaluated the theoretical robustness of these articles. Findings of the present study indicated that in terms of the topic destination sustainability in tourism, the articles retrieved to study are theoretically robust to a great extent. Future studies should involve the less applied theories to enhance the theoretical rigorousness in tourism.