Data collection and analysis method were guided by three main stages: 1) Exploration, 2) Experimentation and 3) Evaluation. In the Exploration (1) stage desk research and literature review were used to outline the concepts and practices about evidence-informed policymaking and to provide a critical assessment of sustainable tourism indicators in city governance. This process was complemented by co-editing Torres-Delgado, A. & Miller, G. a special issue on Sustainable Tourism Indicators in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 31:7 (2023) (Q1, SJR: 2.97 2022), and culminated by publishing a scientific paper on the state of the art of this topic: Miller, G. & Torres-Delgado, A. (2023). Measuring sustainable tourism: a state of the art review of sustainable tourism indicators. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 31:7, 1483-1496. This first theoretical approach identifies that, despite recent improvements in sustainability data and lots of experiences in building sustainable tourism indicators at a destination level, very little has been done to make better evidence-informed decisions and even less to monitor results from these decisions.
The theoretical framework was complemented through workshops based on action-based participatory methods to advance the understanding of the role of indicators in policymaking. The data collected was also critically assessed to write a scientific that highlights that absorbing knowledge from sustainable tourism indicators is a complex process that requires feedback loops and iterative practices to progress from data collection to making decisions based on evidence. The mechanisms that positively influence this journey can be grouped into three themes: formal and informal learning, disrupting prevalent mindsets, and ensuring the relevance and understandability of data. This paper was positively reviewed by the journal Tourism Management (Q1, SJR: 3.56 2022) and we have now submitted the revised version.
The Experimentation (2) stage was used to design and test ideas that could be finally developed in real-life communities and settings. Our experiments focused on measuring carbon footprint of tourist markets and testing its impact in decision-making. Besides providing the carbon footprint for each of our pilot cities, we also designed an easy-to-use calculator (
https://openresearch.surrey.ac.uk/esploro/outputs/99741166602346(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) to be used more widely, and it was distributed during several conferences and meetings with other European destinations. Additionally, the launch of our carbon footprint calculator fostered collaboration with other researchers and resulted in a co-authored paper the first version of which has been positively reviewed at the Journal of Sustainable Tourism (Q1, SJR: 2.97 2022), and we have now submitted the revised version. This paper shows how target market decisions should change once costs are added to the mix (contribution to climate change), with regional and national markets becoming much more attractive than distant markets due to their low carbon footprints, despite shorter tourist stays or lower expenditures.
As experiments, we designed a three-stage mixed methods protocol delivered in several workshops to explore DMMO employee responses to a visualisation of data that facilitates a cost-benefit analysis of tourism. Specifically, carbon footprint and expenditure by tourist markets were cross-referred, and its influence on decision-making was discussed through focus groups (stage 1), voting (stage 2) and surveys (stage 3). We worked closely with our four pilot cities, but additional data was also collected during international events of Green Destinations and NECSTouR. In total more than 150 employees of DMMOs participated in our experiments which allowed us to write a scientific that was submitted to the journal Annals of Tourism Research (Q1, SJR: 3.43 2022) and is currently under review. This paper evidences that three factors mediate the evaluation of sustainability data: self-identity and organisational attachment, decision makers’ profile, and perceived relevance and feasibility of actions informed by indicators
Finally, the Evaluation (3) stage analysed the observational data to set an initial theoretical articulation. In-depth interviews with stakeholders were conducted to gather further sources of evidence as well as to refine the theory used to explain the data and the reasoning behind their behaviour. As a result, a final policy report titled "White Paper on SusTPol" was written and disseminated at a face-to-face international workshop delivered at the NECSTouR Annual General Meeting 2023.
