OVERTOURISM AND THE AUTHENTICITY DILEMMA: A BRANDING PERSPECTIVE ON NATURE-BASED TOURISM DESTINATIONS

The objective of this study is to analyze the effect of overtourism and local community engangement on Destination Brand Equity (DBE) through authenticity as mediating variable. The data of this study taken from 200 tourist of nature tourism destination choosen by nonprobability sampling method (purposive sampling). After data analysis is carried out using SEM AMOS, result shows that overtourism has negative effect on authenticity while local community engangement has positive effect on authenticity. Other result shows that authenticity itself has positiove effect on destination brand equity and then also can mediated the effect of overtourism and local community engangement on destination brand equity. This study has an impact on the destination manager to managing their overtourism well so it won’t erode place authenticity and then decreasing destination brand equity. It also important for them to improve local community participation with the intention to preserve authenticity and increase DBE on nature destination object.