Stakeholder-Oriented Ecotourism Management and Marketing: A Sustainability Performance Evaluation of Chengyang Eight Villages in Guangxi, China

As ecotourism destinations face increasing market competition and growing sustainability pressures, destination managers must balance stakeholder interests while converting ecological, sociocultural, and economic resources into sustainable market value. Drawing on stakeholder theory, strategic management, and destination marketing perspectives, this study develops a stakeholder-oriented sustainability performance evaluation framework for ecotourism management. Fourteen indicators across economic, sociocultural, and environmental dimensions are constructed through a literature review and evaluated from the perspective of indigenous residents as core stakeholders. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Likert-scale survey data, and Chengyang Eight Villages in Guangxi, China as the empirical setting, the study assesses the relative managerial priorities of sustainable ecotourism development. The reported dimension weights assign the highest priority to economic sustainability, followed by sociocultural sustainability, whereas environmental sustainability receives the lowest relative weight. Discrepancies between the displayed matrices and indicator weights require reconciliation before the indicator rankings can be treated as definitive. The reported weighting structure highlights differences in the relative emphasis assigned to livelihood, cultural, and environmental considerations, creating important implications for destination governance, market positioning, service experience, and long-term competitiveness. This study contributes to management and marketing research by reframing ecotourism sustainability evaluation as a strategic decision-support mechanism through which destination managers can coordinate stakeholder interests, allocate resources, strengthen destination value propositions, protect cultural and environmental assets, and improve sustainable competitive advantage. Managerially, the findings suggest that destination management organizations should integrate stakeholder engagement, sustainability performance measurement, cultural branding, visitor experience design, and environmental governance into a coherent destination marketing strategy.