Assessing progress of tourism sustainability: Developing and validating sustainability indicators

This study aims at developing and testing comprehensive set of indicators that would help to conduct meaningful assessment of a progress towards sustainable tourism development. Using three-round Delphi Method, participants were requested to evaluate the initial list of indicators based on 6 internationally accepted indicator selection criteria. The unidimentionality, multivariate normality, multicollinearity, construct reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and construct validity were assessed using different tests including Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Among 158 candidate indicators, only 53 were retained, which were found to be free from the problem of multicollinearity (5.466E-04) and have good internal consistency (0.963), convergent validity (AVE>0.5, CR > 0.9 and SRW>0.71), discriminant validity (AVE > r2) and construct validity (P = 0.06, RMSEA = 0.071, GFI = 0.895, CFI = 0.952, TLI = 0.941, NFI = 0.910, Chisquare/df = 2.016). Therefore, it is recommended that broad-based participation of key stakeholders is highly important to develop good indicators that would help to make informed decision on tourism industry.