Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale (STAS)

1. Abstract

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale (STAS) is an extensively validated psychometric instrument designed to measure host community residents’ attitudes toward the multidimensional principles and practices of sustainable tourism development. Developed by Hye-Sook Choi and Ercan Sirakaya (2005), the instrument emerged in response to conceptual and methodological limitations in prior tourism impact literature, which frequently overemphasized neoclassical economic outcomes while neglecting ecological limits, long-term stewardship, and host quality of life. Grounded in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) foundational frameworks for sustainable development, the full standard scale comprises 44 items operationalized along seven distinct, theoretically substantive subscales: Community Orientation, Eco-centric Orientation, Visitor Satisfaction, Maximization of Quality of Life, Long-term Planning, Economic Development, and Environmental Integrity. Responses are measured using an authentic 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”).

Psychometric evaluation across rigorous exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) demonstrates that the STAS possesses robust construct, convergent, and discriminant validity, alongside high internal consistency reliability, with subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding 0.75 to 0.90 across diverse geographical settings. Cross-cultural adaptations and structural equation modeling have verified its predictive capacity regarding resident support for local tourism initiatives, environmental protection behaviors, and public policy compliance. By integrating ecological ethics from the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) and social exchange dynamics, the STAS remains an essential diagnostic and evaluative tool for destination management organizations (DMOs), municipal planners, sociologists, and environmental psychologists seeking sustainable, community-centered destination stewardship.

2. Keywords

Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale, STAS, resident attitudes, sustainable tourism, scale validation, psychometrics, community orientation, eco-centric orientation, environmental integrity, destination management, tourism impact assessment, sustainable development.

3. Authors

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by:

• Hye-Sook Choi, Ph.D. — Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States. Dr. Choi’s scholarly agenda focuses on sustainable community development, resident sentiment modeling, social psychology of leisure, and structural equation modeling in tourism planning.
• Ercan Sirakaya(-Turk), Ph.D. — Professor, Department of Retailing, Hotels, and Tourism Management, College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, United States (formerly with Texas A&M University). Dr. Sirakaya-Turk is a recognized leader in tourism economics, sustainable destination planning, and quantitative behavioral modeling in international tourism development.

Correspondence regarding original scale development was directed via the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2261, USA.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale is to provide a standardized, theoretically rigorous, and psychometrically robust measurement framework for evaluating how local community residents perceive, value, and respond to sustainable tourism policies. For decades, host community impact research was dominated by fragmented ad-hoc surveys that measured tourism solely along broad economic, social, and physical axes without reconciling these perceptions with the systemic tenants of global sustainability. The STAS was intentionally constructed to operationalize sustainability principles formulated by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Brundtland Commission, and Agenda 21, translating abstract macro-level policy goals into quantifiable individual-level psychological constructs.

In municipal governance, regional development, and Destination Management Organizations (DMOs), the STAS is deployed as an empirical diagnostic instrument. Community-based tourism requires local buy-in; without public endorsement, tourism development initiatives inevitably encounter civil friction, resource degradation, resident hostility toward tourists, and cultural erosion. The STAS enables planners to map baseline community sentiment, identify systemic divergences between resident expectations and governmental priorities, and evaluate longitudinal shifts in attitude following destination interventions or regulatory changes.

In academic, sociological, and psychological research, the STAS serves as an indispensable latent construct measure within structural equation models examining pro-environmental behaviors, civic engagement, civic pride, social carrying capacity, and political support for green zoning. By distinguishing between distinct dimensions such as Eco-centric Orientation and Economic Development, researchers can discern how residents reconcile conflicting incentives—such as immediate financial gains versus long-term preservation of ecological integrity. Ultimately, the instrument shifts tourism planning away from top-down developer-centric paradigms toward participatory, balance-oriented, and ethically grounded community development.

5. Psychological Construct

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale conceptualizes resident attitude not as a unidimensional valence of positive or negative affect, but as a complex, multicomponent cognitive and evaluative architecture reflecting sustainable development tenets. The 44 items encompass seven distinct psychological dimensions:

Community Orientation (Items 1–7)

This dimension measures the respondent’s cognitive appraisal of tourism as a collective catalyst for social cohesion, cultural revitalization, community pride, and civic identity. It reflects an orientation toward collective solidarity, evaluating whether tourism reinforces or disrupts local traditions, civic harmony, and inter-resident cooperation. A high score signifies a belief that tourism should serve as a collective asset rather than an extractive enterprise.

Eco-centric Orientation (Items 8–16)

Drawing deeply from environmental ethics and ecological psychology, this subscale captures an individual’s fundamental belief in ecological balance, the intrinsic rights of nature, the limits of human intervention, and human vulnerability to ecological collapse. It evaluates the degree to which residents repudiate anthropocentric dominance and acknowledge that local tourism must strictly operate within the carrying capacities of the biosphere.

Visitor Satisfaction (Items 17–21)

This subscale evaluates the resident’s appreciation of the tourist’s experiential welfare, hospitality standards, safety, and infrastructure quality. In psychological terms, it captures outward-facing hospitality altruism, reflecting the host’s recognition that long-term destination viability depends directly upon the subjective well-being, dignity, and positive psychological fulfillment experienced by visitors.

Maximization of Quality of Life (Items 22–26)

This dimension assesses the resident’s expectation that tourism development must tangibly enhance human flourishing across multiple domains of subjective and objective well-being. It measures perceived impacts on physical health, psychological peace of mind, personal growth, educational opportunities, and the general standard of living within the neighborhood.

Long-term Planning (Items 27–33)

This construct reflects temporal orientation, assessing the host resident’s cognitive valuation of strategic foresight, continuous environmental monitoring, adaptive governance, and intergenerational responsibility over short-term speculative exploitation. It measures support for institutional master plans, scientific environmental impact assessments, and systemic community participation in long-term municipal governance.

Economic Development (Items 34–39)

This subscale measures the pragmatic, instrumental evaluation of tourism as a driver of macroeconomic security and microeconomic opportunity. It captures beliefs regarding employment creation, tax base diversification, entrepreneurial investment, and business stabilization, embodying the utilitarian component of community exchange.

Environmental Integrity (Items 40–44)

Unlike general eco-centric worldviews, Environmental Integrity captures explicit, action-oriented mandates for the direct protection of local biophysical assets against tourism degradation. It focuses on the preservation of visual landscapes, protection of endemic wildlife habitats, conservation of natural landmarks, and the ethical prioritization of natural resource protection over rapid commercial expansion.

6. Theoretical Framework

The STAS is situated at the intersection of several foundational social and psychological paradigms:

First and foremost is Social Exchange Theory (SET) (Homans, 1958; Blau, 1964), which posits that individual human behaviors and social attitudes are governed by subjective cost-benefit analyses. In tourism studies, SET has traditionally asserted that residents tolerate environmental and social disruptions if perceived personal or municipal economic dividends outweigh the costs. However, Choi and Sirakaya (2005) argued that classical SET is inherently reductionist when applied to ecological systems because it fails to capture non-economic, ethical, and intergenerational values. Consequently, the STAS extends SET by embedding social justice, ethical equity, and non-compensatory ecological values into the exchange calculus.

Second, the instrument integrates Dunlap and Van Liere’s New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) (Dunlap et al., 2000), which challenges anthropocentric views of human exceptionalism and emphasizes ecological limits, balance of nature, and anti-exemptionalism. Items 8 through 16 directly operationalize NEP-derived theoretical assumptions within a community tourism nexus, measuring whether residents view human settlements as fully integrated components of natural ecosystems rather than masters of them.

Third, the scale is anchored in the international policy architecture of Sustainable Development formulated in the Brundtland Report (1987) and codified by UNEP and UNWTO. This theoretical paradigm insists on three irreducible, interlocked pillars: economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental conservation. By structuring the measurement model across seven subscales that align with these three pillars, the STAS provides a psychometrically sound operationalization of sustainability theory, enabling structural equation modeling that respects both system-level ecological constraints and individual-level cognitive motivations.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the STAS was established through extensive empirical testing across multiple research phases:

Content and Face Validity

During initial scale development, an exhaustive item pool derived from an extensive review of international sustainable development literature, the NEP scale, and municipal tourism studies was subjected to double-panel expert reviews. Panels consisting of academic tourism specialists, environmental sociologists, and municipal destination planners critically assessed item phrasing, conceptual clarity, and domain representativeness, pruning redundant and ambiguous items to preserve face and content validity.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated through rigorous structural equation modeling using LISREL and AMOS. In the baseline validation study by Choi and Sirakaya (2005), confirmatory factor analysis verified that the hypothesized seven-factor model exhibited superior fit relative to alternative single-factor or three-factor models. Standardized factor loadings across all 44 items loaded significantly on their designated latent factors, with the vast majority exceeding the stringent 0.60 threshold (ranging from 0.55 to 0.88, p < .001), indicating strong construct representation.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity is evidenced by high composite reliabilities (CR > .80) and average variance extracted (AVE) values typically exceeding .50 across subscales. Discriminant validity was empirically substantiated by demonstrating that the average variance extracted for any given pair of latent constructs exceeded the square of the inter-construct correlation (Fornell-Larcker criterion). Furthermore, the distinctness between Eco-centric Orientation and Environmental Integrity confirmed that broad ecological worldviews are cognitively distinct from concrete site-specific conservation mandates.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

Subsequent empirical investigations worldwide have demonstrated strong predictive validity: STAS dimensions reliably predict community support for sustainable destination initiatives, participation in conservation programs, acceptance of visitor management regulations, and pro-environmental voting behavior. In structural models, Economic Development and Quality of Life positively predict tourism development backing, whereas high Eco-centric Orientation and Environmental Integrity moderate developer enthusiasm when environmental safeguards are inadequate.

8. Reliability

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale exhibits exceptional internal consistency and test stability across multiple empirical studies and international cultural contexts:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): In the initial validation study by Choi and Sirakaya (2005), the overall scale achieved an exemplary Cronbach’s alpha of .94. Subscale-specific internal consistency reliability estimates were robust: Community Orientation (α = .86), Eco-centric Orientation (α = .84), Visitor Satisfaction (α = .82), Maximization of Quality of Life (α = .87), Long-term Planning (α = .89), Economic Development (α = .88), and Environmental Integrity (α = .85).
• Cross-Cultural Reliability: International replications have repeatedly substantiated these metrics. Studies deploying translated versions of the scale in European, Asian, and Latin American destinations have reported alpha coefficients consistently spanning .78 to .92 across the subscales, indicating that the instrument retains robust internal measurement properties regardless of regional cultural idiosyncrasies.
• Composite Reliability: Confirmatory structural evaluations report composite reliability (CR) coefficients well above the standard .70 benchmark (ranging from .81 to .91 across all seven latent dimensions), confirming that random measurement error is minimal.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the STAS was identified and validated through a multi-stage factor analytic methodology:

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial item reduction utilized principal axis factoring and principal component analysis paired with oblique (Promax) and orthogonal (Varimax) rotations on baseline calibration samples. Items demonstrating cross-loadings greater than .40 across multiple components or factor loadings below .50 were pruned. Scree test analyses and eigenvalues-greater-than-one criteria consistently isolated seven distinct latent factors that cumulatively accounted for over 62% of total variance.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) & Model Fit

The seven-factor structural model was subsequently validated via confirmatory factor analysis on independent validation samples. The measurement model demonstrated strong goodness-of-fit indices:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom (χ²/df): Ratios typically range between 1.85 and 2.40, comfortably within the accepted benchmark of < 3.0.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values systematically range between .92 and .96, indicating excellent relative fit compared to the null model.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Coefficients regularly surpass .91, reflecting high model parsimony.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates consistently fall between .042 and .058 (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .038 to .064), demonstrating negligible approximation error in the population.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed values are consistently below .050, well within acceptable thresholds.

All standardized factor loadings on the target factors were statistically significant (p < .001), corroborating the structural stability of the 44-item, seven-dimension taxonomy.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The STAS is a multi-item, self-report psychological survey designed for self-administration via paper questionnaires, digital surveys, or field interviews. The specifications are structured as follows:

• Test Type: Psychometric rating scale / Latent multidimensional attitude inventory.
• Target Population: Adult residents (aged 18 and older) of communities experiencing or planning tourism development.
• Item Count: 44 items divided across 7 subscales.
• Subscale Breakdown:
  • Community Orientation: Items 1 to 7 (7 items)
  • Eco-centric Orientation: Items 8 to 16 (9 items)
  • Visitor Satisfaction: Items 17 to 21 (5 items)
  • Maximization of Quality of Life: Items 22 to 26 (5 items)
  • Long-term Planning: Items 27 to 33 (7 items)
  • Economic Development: Items 34 to 39 (6 items)
  • Environmental Integrity: Items 40 to 44 (5 items)
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = moderately disagree, 3 = somewhat disagree, 4 = neutral, 5 = somewhat agree, 6 = moderately agree, 7 = strongly agree).
• Administration Time: Approximately 12 to 18 minutes.
• Scoring Procedures: Subscale scores are obtained by calculating the mean or sum of the items comprising each dimension. High composite scores on a specific subscale indicate stronger agreement and cognitive support for that facet of sustainable tourism. No overall single total score is recommended; instead, a multidimensional profile across the 7 subscales should be analyzed to assess resident sentiment.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale was formally published in 2005 in the Journal of Travel Research. As an academic psychometric instrument developed through institutional public funding and scholarly dissemination, the scale is generally accessible free of charge for non-commercial educational, scientific, and academic research purposes, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors (Choi & Sirakaya, 2005).

For commercial use, municipal public-private consulting projects, proprietary destination marketing assessments, or systematic redistribution in corporate software suites, researchers and practitioners must verify copyright compliance through the publisher (Sage Publications) and contact the primary authors directly regarding licensing and intellectual property permissions.

12. References

Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley & Sons.

Choi, H. C., & Sirakaya, E. (2005). Measuring residents’ attitude toward sustainable tourism: Development of sustainable tourism attitude scale. Journal of Travel Research, 43(4), 380–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287505274651

Choi, H. C., & Sirakaya, E. (2006). Sustainability indicators for managing community tourism. Tourism Management, 27(6), 1274–1289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2005.05.018

Dunlap, R. E., Van Liere, K. D., Mertig, A. G., & Jones, R. E. (2000). Measuring endorsement of the new ecological paradigm: A revised NEP scale. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 425–442. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00176

Homans, G. C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63(6), 597–606. https://doi.org/10.1086/222355

Sirakaya-Turk, E., Ekinci, Y., & Martin, D. (2015). The foundation of destination competitiveness: An integrated approach. Journal of Travel Research, 54(6), 691–707. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287514535848

World Tourism Organization and United Nations Environment Programme. (2005). Making tourism more sustainable: A guide for policy makers. World Tourism Organization. https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284408214

13. Items of the Scale