Tourist Perception of Sustainable Community-Based Tourism: A Structural Model of Authenticity, Integral Sustainability and Ethical Co-Design

Sustainable Community-Based Tourism (SCBT) has been predominantly assessed from residents’ perspectives, leaving unexplored how tourists perceive and validate community sustainability. This study analyzes the influence of three SCBT dimensions, authenticity and community empowerment, integral sustainability, and ethical co-design, on tourist experience. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), we analyzed 341 responses from Mexican tourists with experience in indigenous community destinations in Oaxaca. Results show that integral sustainability is the strongest predictor of tourist experience, followed by ethical co-design. Notably, authenticity and community empowerment exhibit a significant inverse relationship, suggesting tensions between genuine local governance and visitor expectations. These findings position tourists as external validators of SCBT and challenge the linear authenticity–experience relationship assumed in classic literature, highlighting the need for heritage interpretation strategies that mediate this interaction. The study provides evidence from underrepresented Latin American indigenous contexts, addressing theoretical and geographical gaps in sustainable tourism research.