Sustainable tourism: an interpretative and management paradigm

The paper proposes an economic reference framework to deal with the local sustainability issue in tourism. It addresses the question of whether sustainable tourism is a balance between the environment, economy and community issues or whether it is up to the community to decide where the balance should lie. These two different ways to look at the problem are stuck in two alternative reference paradigms: the liability as opposed to the property rules approach. The paper proposes an economic interpretation rooted in a property rights framework à la Coase. Its aim is to produce a theoretical framework to select the appropriate economic instruments to pursue sustainability in tourism. Therefore, the paper proposes a definition of sustainable tourism and a consistent management scheme to pursue it. Considering the peculiarity of the sector, it argues that to implement the appropriate policies for the sustainability in tourism, more than elsewhere, a simultaneous proper management of tourism demand and supply, and a set of instruments of a more non-technical than technical nature are required.