Is Being Responsible Sustainable in Tourism? Connections and Critical Differences

Since the early 1990s, sustainability has formed a development paradigm for tourism. Recently, however, researchers and policymakers have shown considerable interest in the notion of responsibility in tourism. While responsible and sustainable tourism share many common elements, their ideological context and societal background may involve critical differences. The purpose of this review paper is to discuss the ideas of responsibility and sustainability in tourism and especially how they have emerged in tourism studies and activities, and what implications their differences may have for tourism development and its future practices and policies. Here, sustainable tourism is understood as being based on regulative structures involving multiple scales of policies and decision-making, while responsible tourism derives some of its core focus and practices from neoliberal governance with its emphasis on individualized and personalized behavior and decision-making. These different contextual backgrounds indicate why we should not automatically equate these two ideas in research, especially when thinking about how the growth-driven tourism industry could and should respond to global challenges in future. Furthermore, building on the structuration theory, the paper discusses how these two different approaches are often interconnected and can lead a way towards sustainable development in tourism.

Automated summary

While responsible and sustainable tourism share many common elements, their ideological context and societal background may involve critical differences. Sustainable tourism is based on regulative structures involving multiple scales of policies and decision-making, while responsible tourism derives its focus from neoliberal governance with emphasis on individualized behavior and decision-making. These different contextual backgrounds indicate the need to carefully distinguish between these two concepts, especially when considering the future response of the tourism industry to global challenges.