Annotated Bibliography: Changing Perspectives on Sustainable Tourism

This annotated bibliography provides a comprehensive review of five contemporary research articles focused on the evolving perspectives of sustainable tourism development. The articles highlight the significance of sustainability for destination competitiveness, emphasizing the role of tourism in fostering social and political understanding while preserving cultural and natural resources. The studies, employing methods like content analysis, questionnaires, and literature reviews, explore the viewpoints of stakeholders, residents, and policymakers. The research underscores the growing academic interest in sustainable tourism, addressing emerging issues and recommending strategies for development. The articles cover topics such as the social perspective of tourism, climate change impacts, tourism research trends, environmental sustainability, and the influence of tourism on indigenous populations. Each article contributes to the understanding of sustainable tourism and its multifaceted challenges and opportunities, with limitations acknowledged and further research suggested. The bibliography offers a valuable resource for understanding the current state of research and future directions in sustainable tourism development.

Student Name
Institutional affiliation(S)
Sustainable Tourism Development
Annotated Bibliography

P a g e | 1
Executive summary
This annotated bibliography has been prepared after collecting five contemporary
research articles on changing perspectives on sustainable tourism development to make a
comprehensive review of every article separately. Each of the five articles reflects that in last
few decades, sustainable tourism concept has been considered as an international debate topic
where most of the researchers recognised that sustainability is the most important elements
pertaining destination competitiveness. Notably, researchers agreed to the point that tourism
contributes in stimulating developments of political and social understandings as travelling
fosters restored kinship within people who reflected assorted regimes. Hence, it can be said
that a competitive destination can not only create and deliver exclusive tourism experience,
but also satisfy the expectations and needs of visitors while ensuring that cultural and natural
resources are preserved effectively.
Every article used for this annotated bibliography valued tourism development as it
guarantees long-term well-being along with enhancing local community living standards.
Most of the articles utilised content analysis methods along with conducting qualitative and
quantitative data collection and interpretation methods. Few articles utilised questionaries’
and literature review pertaining the aforementioned topic to reveal major ideas and
viewpoints of tourism stakeholders, tourism destination residents, organisations and policy
makers. While few of the articles showed limitation in existing studies, they all recommended
significant steps that can assist its readers while considering sustainable tourism
development. The articles revealed that research pertaining change in perspectives on
sustainable tourism development is gaining significant attention among tourism academia and
thus scholars from various destinations are making considerable contributions to address
emerging issues in their respective destinations.

P a g e | 2
Annotated Bibliography
Article1.
Ajay, K. L., Devasia, D., & PV, S. K. (2015). The Social Perspective of Tourism in Review
of Sustainability and Carrying Capacity: A Synthesis of Observations and
Convictions. Atna-Journal of Tourism Studies, 10(02), 45-58.
In this article, authors cite tourism as an authoritative branch within socio-expansion
in contemporary epochs, thereby backing it with diversified ways and reinforcing inner-
connected processes. The authors prompted tourism development changes that directly or
indirectly changed social atmosphere of tourism destinations. The changes seen in economic
and social atmosphere of few towns, countries and several regions can attribute directly
towards advent of tourists and tourism. With such note, the authors carried a social capacity
detection that elaborate utilisation of various attitudes and tolerance level seen among host
population that assisted in setting limits for tourism development sustainability. This paper
highlights theoretical approach which signifies sociological perspective scope in tourism
while carrying capacity level testing to integrate the criticisms and contemplations regarding
the research concept. The findings made outlines the development on sustainable tourism
related research in terms of knowledge base, collaboration impacts and thematic coverage for
which several themes were selected and showcased current trends seen in sustainable tourism
research.
The literature section of the article reveals that residents of various tourist destinations
have to go through different stages of euphoria, antagonism, apathy, irritation. The level of
irritation arising from contact between visitors and host destination people is determined by
level of mutual compatibility. The authors reviewed some very critical observations
pertaining social characteristics of tourism destinations that unites the area of sustainability

P a g e | 3
along with carrying capacity. The contemporary tourism research approaches series of social-
behavioural aspects of communities based at the lowest priorities or side-lines who are
exceeding social carrying capability limits. This in turn causes adverse impacts on
destinations along with hampering sustainability scopes. Therefore, the authors conclude after
suggesting integrated development and research strategy that needs to be adopted by tourism
authorities for retaining and developing social sustainability concerning tourist destinations.
Article 2.
Chiappa, G. D., Usai, S., Cocco, A., & Atzeni, M. (2018). Sustainable Tourism Development
and Climate Change: A Supply-Side Perspective. Journal of Tourism, Heritage &
Services Marketing, 4(02), 3-9.
This article represents and discusses the research findings carried out of a sample
study in which 141 tourism stakeholders in two of the tourism destinations of Sardinia of
Italy were interrogated. The article aims at finding out priorities which were considered
essential by the respondents for gaining sustainable and competitive businesses along with
destination development as a whole. The authors also propose to find major barriers to
sustainable tourism along with changing attitude of tourists and climatic changes that
influences tourism sector. To serve the purpose behind preparing this research, the authors
prepared a well-structured questionnaire prior making a comprehensive literature review,
complemented by significant site contributions and qualitative study in targeted areas to
explore viewpoints of local stakeholders.
This article intended in making a study which deepens scientific debate aiming at
stakeholder’s viewpoint analyses concerning tourism sustainability along with discussing
barriers that prevents tourism developments especially in hospitality organisations that strives

P a g e | 4
for gaining destination-based competitiveness. To achieve its aim, this article conducts a
deepened study while discussing in literature review section about tourism associations and
policy makers of destination marketers. The authors discuss and suggests that they should
create and provide training programs regarding climatic changes along with educating about
effects of climatic changes on tourism sector. While doing so, policy makers must consider
other significant aspects like waste management and biodiversity conservation along with
developing ways that can implement digital marketing to render local stakeholders. This will
make them aware of national, regional and other funding-based opportunities that may assist
in developing sustainable tourism projects. On concluding note, the article recommended few
actions that can possibly improve accessibility to both stakeholders of tourist destinations as
well as tourists after considering eco-friendly solutions. Although, the study made in this
article fills the literature gap in existing knowledge-base by suggesting various implications
to policy makers and destination marketers, the findings of the article cannot be generalised
since it conducted a specific site-based study.
Article 3.
Kirilenko, A. P., & Stepchenkova, S. (2018). Tourism research from its inception to present
day: Subject area, geography, and gender distributions. PLoS ONE, 13(11), 1-20.
This article classifies tourism as one of the social phenomena for motivation and
tourists experience, sustainable tourism for developing hospitality industry and critical
governing for enabling sustainable tourism practices. Consequently, the authors analysed
another similar concept research paper that addressed potential behind planned socio-
economy for developments in tourism practices and sustainability. The authors utilised text
data mining approach for identifying long-term developments seen in tourism academic

P a g e | 5
findings from thematic focus perspectives along with other gender-based and geographical
authorship. This article extracted abstracts published in between the years 1970 to 2017
which particularly ranked higher among tourist journals that were originated from Scopus
database thereby serving the purpose data collection required for detailed analysis.
The research findings of the article indicate for wider range of study and diversified
application in tourism, infused with contribution made by different fields of investigation.
Such revelation clearly outlines relationship between traditional study area and current
dynamics of tourism like marketing or sociology along with other closely connected areas
like leisure or hospitality studies. After making a content analysis of quantitative and
qualitative data collected, the authors find that textual information present in every
bibliographic study contained sustainable tourism development approaches related negative
impacts of detrimental effects like under-developed or developing countries’ economies that
restrained significant tourism development processes. This idea can be concluded based on
the general notion that people or tourists always like to travel long distances in developing
countries and that haul long travelling can always result in reduction of local tourism in such
countries. However, such notion has been collected from the viewpoints of global tourism
that ignores domestic trips and assumes that travelling from one local destination to the other
is not considered as a tourism activity in tourism sector.

P a g e | 6
Article 4.
Peeters , P., & Landré, M. (2012). The Emerging Global Tourism Geography—An
Environmental Sustainability Perspective. Sustainability, 4, 42-71.
This article recognises and states that tourism remains environmentally unsustainable
especially due to tourism contribution in bringing climatic changes where other sectors are
considering reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims at revealing structural
reasons behind increased greenhouse gases due to tourism and its consequences thereof
violating sustainability policies. The authors claim that main cause behind strong emission
from tourism is because of time-space expansion seen within global tourism behaviours.
Geography and contemporary tourism theory fail to clarify this geographical change thereby
making it complicated in understanding such expansions and effective policies to eliminate
environmental impacts. This article explores significant elements regarding ‘new tourism
geography’ along with showing how this can help in comprehending reasons behind
environmentally unsustainable development causes pertaining tourism.
The article puts in front few questions like whether current tourism is developing, are
present studies well-equipped that could assist policy makers for enabling sustainable tourism
practices and how can geography of tourism destination get changed for developing
sustainability stances in it. The authors used mixed methodology for analysing and finding
the above questions answers for which they conducted a detailed analysis of Dutch
holidaymaker’s data along with other literature review extracted from different articles. The
authors answered above questions in the article’s conclusion para stating tourism is not
showing any development with regards to climatic change. The second answer revealed that
the way tourism geography is applied, it misleads policy makes by providing them with
insufficient information and thirdly, sustainable tourism development is not possible without

P a g e | 7
reducing global travel distances, combining additional developments in energy efficiencies in
both accommodations and transportation. Thus, the authors recommended making a detailed
analysis of tourism destinations for establishing socio-cultural and economic flows that are
caused by tourism before proceeding towards finding negative and positive impacts of it.
Article 5.
Qian, J., Shen , H., & Law, R. (2018). Research in Sustainable Tourism: A Longitudinal
Study of Articles between 2008 and 2017. Sustainability, 10(590), 1-13.
The above article reflects the influence tourism has on environment which have led
many researchers and scholars find ways for development of sustainable tourism. The article
finds that many countries government and popular destinations are actively taking part in
sustainable tourism research, thereby contributing to the concept of achieving global renown.
To develop the panoramic view behind sustainable tourism research, the authors extracted
articles concerning sustainable tourism from online sources. A content analysis method was
adopted to conduct bibliometric research and thematic analyses along with several visual
tools that detected the knowledge base for the research filed. The collaborative analysis made
by the authors confirms scholarly participation in global destinations along with identifying
several geographical factors that enables enhanced cooperation among scholars from nearby
places. The article uses majorly The Journal of Sustainable Tourism (JST) for examining
current and previous scenarios, aiming to promote innovative and critical thinking regarding
relationship between tourism and sustainable development.
According to the authors, the study made in different articles ensured a multi-
perspective examination of tourism development which took into account its environmental,
social and cultural aspects. This article can contribute effectively in contributing development

P a g e | 8
of sustainable tourism along with guiding hospitality industry practices as the study
highlighted major issues that needs to be resolved critically for developed tourism activities
like protection of heritages, preserving indigenous culture and upholding indigenous
population rights. The authors conclude after suggesting that residents residing in indigenous
areas must be empowered with knowledge, communication skills and economic sources
which has been repeatedly suggested to aid sustainable development concerning indigenous
tourism. However, since this article utilised research made in selected set of articles (JST) for
making examination, while majority of journals examine several sustainable tourism scopes,
it reflects incompleteness to some extent and thus requires making a more comprehensive
view to make a complete sustainable tourism research.

P a g e | 9
References
Ajay, K. L., Devasia, D., & PV, S. K. (2015). The Social Perspective of Tourism in Review
of Sustainability and Carrying Capacity: A Synthesis of Observations and
Convictions. Atna-Journal of Tourism Studies, 10(02), 45-58.
Chiappa, G. D., Usai, S., Cocco, A., & Atzeni, M. (2018). Sustainable Tourism Development
and Climate Change: A Supply-Side Perspective. Journal of Tourism, Heritage &
Services Marketing, 4(02), 3-9.
Kirilenko, A. P., & Stepchenkova, S. (2018). Tourism research from its inception to present
day: Subject area, geography, and gender distributions. PLoS ONE, 13(11), 1-20.
Peeters , P., & Landré, M. (2012). The Emerging Global Tourism Geography—An
Environmental Sustainability Perspective. Sustainability, 4, 42-71.
Qian, J., Shen , H., & Law, R. (2018). Research in Sustainable Tourism: A Longitudinal
Study of Articles between 2008 and 2017. Sustainability, 10(590), 1-13.