A Systematic Framework for Identifying, Validating, and Evaluating Ecotourism Sustainability Indicators: A Case Study of AlUla, Saudi Arabia

Assessing sustainability in ecotourism destinations remains challenging due to the multidimensional interactions among environmental, socio-cultural, educational, and managerial factors. Existing assessment approaches often focus on isolated sustainability aspects and lack a systematic procedure for identifying, validating, and quantitatively evaluating sustainability indicators. To address this gap, the framework sequentially applies the Ecotourism Opportunity Spectrum (ECOS) model for indicator identification, Delphi for expert validation, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) for statistical verification before Sustainability Index development in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. The results collected 25 Ecotourism sustainability indicators grouped into five dimensions: nature, environmental education/protection, sustainability, socio-cultural benefits, and tourist satisfaction from the literature. A two-round Delphi process involving 110 experts achieved more than 80% expert agreement across all indicators, while CFA confirmed the reliability and validity of the proposed framework. A Sustainability Index was subsequently developed, resulting in an overall Sustainability Index score of 52.40 on the normalized 0–100 scale. The findings highlight the strengths of environmental education and protection while identifying opportunities for improvement in sustainability and nature-related dimensions. This study develops and validates a systematic sustainability assessment framework for AlUla, Saudi Arabia, as the empirical study context, providing policymakers, tourism planners, and destination managers with a practical tool for evaluating and monitoring sustainable ecotourism performance. Although developed and tested in AlUla, the methodological process may provide a basis for assessment in other ecotourism destinations, subject to context-specific indicator adaptation and local validation.