1.3. Evaluating sustainability from integrated perspective
Future tourism must be concerned with more than sustainability. Perhaps, after three decades of academic and planning literature on sustainability, we must change our horizons and speak of sustained value creation for each of the tourist, the tourist industry and communities (Ryan,2002). In order to efficiently examine the sustainable development of tourism destinations, some scholars have proposed the notion of sustainable tourism indicators. But sustainable tourism indicators are still in incipient stages and practical case studies are hard to come by (Twining-Ward & Butler, 2002).
Wallace and Pierce (1996) utilized related indicators to evaluate the existing relationships among stakeholders and future developments of an Amazonian community and local resources and tourists. Ross and Wall (1999a, b) established a structure of indicators concerning local community, tourism and resource, and studied the developing conditions of ecotourism through
a measurement of the relationships among these stakeholders. Their work further confirmed the use of indicator structure derived from perspectives of ecotourism stakeholders. However, the indicators exploring the inter relationships among stakeholders were measured mainly from the viewpoints of researchers. This study investigated the sustainability of a Taiwanese indigenous ecotourism site. Local residents, tourists and resource administration (RA) were interviewed to explore each group’s perception of its relationships with the other two groups so as to form the evaluation basis associated with the sustainability of an ecotourism site. First, through analyzing the interrelationships among community, tourism and resource, variables influencing sustainability was empirically collected and further categorized into environmental, social and economic dimensions. Then the Delphi technique was utilized to identify feasible evaluation indicators and their priority weights. The Sustainable Ecotourism Indicators System (SEIS) was then developed.