The Effects of Optimizing Water Consumption on the Development of Sustainable Tourism

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 PhD Student of tourism at Qeshm International Campus of Tehran University, Iran

2 Professor, Faculty of Tourism, University of Tehran, Iran

10.22059/ije.2024.369521.1780

Abstract

Water is an important element for protecting the ecosystem. Recently, the awareness of the value of this resource has been lost, which requires scientific action to encourage the emergence of attitude towards water. Tourism gives great potential to water resources because it facilitates the development of such attractive resources. The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of optimizing water consumption on the development of sustainable tourism. Research method in terms of applied nature; And in terms of implementation method, it was descriptive‌ـ correlational. The statistical population of the present study included 80 managers of five‌ـ star and four‌ـ star hotels in the southern regions of Iran (Kish, Qeshm and Bandarabbas). Due to the limited number of the statistical population, they were selected using the census of all the members of the statistical population. The research tools were aesthetic and temporal water consumption optimization questionnaire (2014), Cottrell et al.'s sustainable tourism development questionnaire (2013), and Khan et al.'s environmental awareness questionnaire (2022). The face and content validity of the questionnaire has been confirmed by organizational experts and the reliability of the questionnaire using Cronbach's alpha was more than 0.7. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least square (PLS) approach in Smart PLS software was used for data analysis. The findings showed that the optimization of water consumption has a significant effect on the development of sustainable tourism and its components (environmental dimension, economic dimension, socio‌ـ cultural dimension and organizational dimension) (P<0.05). Also, optimizing water consumption has a significant effect on environmental awareness (P<0.05).

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Main Subjects


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