Cross-country insights into sustainable tourism performance and local community support for sustainable development

This study investigates the perceptions of sustainability measures and its impact on local community support for sustainable tourism development considering the moderating role of local community attitude toward tourism. Based on 1430 survey responses collected from three Arab countries to examine the impact of five sustainability measures, structural equation modelling was used for data analysis purposes. Multi-group analysis is conducted to highlight differences among the three-country responses. The results revealed that the positive performance of these measures is significantly predicting the local community support of sustainable development. The multi-group analysis of the three countries confirmed the moderating role of community attitude toward tourism in strengthening the association between community support and sustainability measures. This study is useful for policy makers and planners of sustainable development in guiding the development performance and understanding the priority parameters of positive sustainable development. This study develops a measurement scale for sustainable tourism and validates it empirically among respondents of three countries’ local communities. It also measures the impact of the measurement dimensions on local support for tourism development.