A fuzzy evaluation of tourism sustainability

For many years the sustainability assessment of tourist destinations has been based on the carrying capacity, which is a measure that takes into account the preservation of a geographic area (by measuring the number of tourists, the visitor flow and the environmental thresholds) along with its tourist fruition (by assessing the quality of the experience perceived by visitors). Unfortunately, its definition lacks clarity, and its dependence upon qualitative variables makes it unable to provide a unique criterion for its assessment. In this paper we propose a fuzzy approach that takes into account the inherent uncertainty and vagueness of the involved variables to assess a destination's sustainability, by introducing a fuzzy indicator. Our approach has been applied to the Italian region of Sicily, showing a high versatility that makes its use possible jointly with (or alternatively to) other existing methodologies developed by European and international institutions.