Manuel Alector Ribeiro

Tourism interventions, as tools for social change and preservation of natural and cultural assets are inherently complex. This study presents an improved method for the evaluation of complex tourism interventions. We argue that participatory methods can promote a culture of evaluation that supports partners throughout evidencing project impacts, eliminating negative attitudes to evaluation resulting from fear of being judged on performance. We demonstrate that Theory of Change (ToC) is an effective tool that allows organisations to actively co-create and own an evaluation strategy to ensure the delivery of project outcomes. We show how ToC can be applied as a useful process and impact evaluation tool. This paper represents a novel methodological application of ToC based on participatory approaches to evaluation to disseminate knowledge and to improve decision-making in the field of tourism interventions and tourism policy making.

Phygital experiences are becoming prominent in tourism, yet their impact on visitor engagement, particularly in relation to multisensory stimulation, remains underexplored. Grounded in dual-process and optimum stimulation level theories, this study aims to understand how hedonic and functional aspects of phygital experiences influence visitor engagement, satisfaction, and visit intentions and assesses how varying combinations of sensory stimuli moderate these relationships. Data was collected through scenario-based experiments with 413 participants, each exposed to one of six videos representing distinct levels of sensory richness. SEM-based results indicated that both emotional and technological dimensions significantly enhance visitor engagement, which positively influences satisfaction and intention. Multi-group analysis revealed that the strengths of these relationships vary according to the degree of sensory stimulation. Specifying sensory synergy as the coordinated, congruence-based integration of modalities, the study advances dual-process and optimum stimulation level theories in phygital tourism and offers practical guidelines for designing sensory-balanced, human-centered experiences.

This study investigates how crisis leadership is enacted in the hospitality sector by identifying key competencies and mapping their application across the crisis lifecycle. Based on in-depth interviews with 22 hotel leaders in the UK and China, this study develops a three-stage process model—pre-crisis, in-crisis, and post-crisis—that reconceptualises crisis leadership as a dynamic and cyclical practice. Eight interdependent competencies are identified, including emotional regulation, ethical considerations, and strategic thinking. The findings extend Riggio and Newstead's framework and operationalise complexity leadership theory within a high-touch, high-stakes service context. Advancing a psychologically and ethically grounded model of crisis leadership, the study provides both a theoretical reframing and practical guidance for enhancing organisational preparedness, legitimacy, and post-crisis resilience in the hospitality sector.

This study critically evaluates Destination marketing organisations (DMOs) within the paradigm of regenerative tourism, shifting from conventional operating models primarily centred on marketing and economic growth to a regenerative-oriented framework. Building on the scarce tourism transition literature, this study integrates participatory normative scenario-building with the Three-Horizons framework in workshops with 26 DMO managers. It examines current DMO activities, identifies key operating characteristics, and explores how these align with either traditional or regenerative approaches. The findings highlight a need for DMOs to broaden their activities beyond traditional promotion, to include stewardship, management and regenerative marketing. Theoretically, this study contributes to advancing the understanding of regenerative tourism within DMOs, helping bridge the gap between its theoretical foundations and real-world practice. Methodologically, it provides a replicable and adaptable tool for participatory foresight in tourism governance. It contributes a manifesto offering actionable pathways to guide policymakers and DMOs in transitioning towards regenerative tourism futures.

Marine and coastal tourism represents the most significant economic activity within the Blue Economy, particularly in terms of trade volume, contribution to global GDP, and employment generation. This sector assumes an even more critical role in the economies of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), many of which are highly dependent on tourism as a primary engine of growth. Ironically, while SIDS contribute minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions, they are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Sea level rise, coastal erosion, algal blooms, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events pose substantial risks to their tourism industries—threatening jobs, household incomes, and public revenues. In this context, fostering a climate-resilient tourism sector is essential for safeguarding livelihoods and ensuring sustainable development in SIDS. A key stakeholder in this effort is the community of private investors operating along the tourism value chain. Their decisions—regarding where and what to invest in, how to design and construct tourism infrastructure, and how to operate it—have profound implications for climate adaptation and resilience. Therefore, understanding how tourism investors perceive climate risks and how these perceptions influence their investment decision-making is crucial for designing effective public policies that promote resilience. This chapter presents the findings of a study conducted in Cabo Verde, a tourism-dependent SIDS located in West Africa. The study aimed to assess the level and characteristics of climate change awareness among investors in the country’s marine and coastal tourism sector and to identify the factors influencing this awareness. Employing a sequential mixed-methods research design—combining a structured survey with in-depth interviews with key informants—the research reveals that while general awareness of climate change is relatively high (particularly among larger, more experienced, and non-Cape Verdean investors), this awareness has not yet translated into the systematic incorporation of climate risk considerations into investment decisions. These findings offer important insights for policymakers seeking to steer tourism investment toward greater climate resilience in SIDS and across Africa. The study also highlights the need for further research to understand how investor awareness and engagement with climate risks evolve, what behavioral and contextual factors drive such engagement, and what role information dissemination and institutional communication can play in this process.

This study examines the relationships among resident empowerment, perceptions of tourism costs and benefits, and support for sustainable tourism development (SSTD) in a small island destination dominated by all-inclusive resorts. Using survey data from 341 residents in Cape Verde and employing PLS-SEM analysis, results reveal significant relationships between empowerment, benefits, and SSTD. The perception of all-inclusive resorts' positive impacts moderates the relationship between empowerment and SSTD, while the perception of all-inclusive resorts' costs does not moderate any relationships. The study contributes to understanding how all-inclusive tourism development influences resident attitudes and support for sustainability in small island contexts. The findings underscore the importance of empowering residents and managing perceptions of tourism impacts to foster SSTD. Practical implications include the need for policies that promote local empowerment, equitable benefit distribution, and mitigation of negative impacts to ensure long-term sustainability of small island destinations and beyond. ARTICLE HISTORY

This study examines how tourism entrepreneurs of Micro, Small, and Medium enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa (SAA) coped with environmental uncertainties during COVID-19 and the impact on their resilience and subjective well-being (SWB). Using a mixed-methods approach, we combined quantitative survey data from 844 participants and 23 in-depth qualitative interviews in Ghana and Nigeria. Findings reveal that environmental uncertainty triggers problem-focused coping, which significantly enhances resilience and SWB. Conversely, emotion-focused coping shows no significant relationship with uncertainty, indicating a unique response pattern in these contexts. Entrepreneurial team efficacy plays a crucial moderating role in the relationship between coping strategies, resilience, and SWB. While COVID-19 served as the primary context, the findings offer a broader perspective on how entrepreneurs navigate diverse environmental uncertainties in volatile, resource-scarce environments. These findings contribute to a contextualised understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour in SSA and provide practical implications for enhancing entrepreneur support systems in turbulent times.

This study explores the power of the story-based ‘Most Significant Change’ evaluation method to evidence the impacts of a complex sustainable tourism intervention implemented through the cross-border EU-INTERREG ‘EXPERIENCE’ project across six regions on the French-English Channel. The method provides a participatory evaluation framework to capture contextual changes by collecting and analysing personal stories of change considered significant by those directly affected. As intervention-driven changes are often unpredictable and non-linear, the method supports researchers in exploring and learning about unexpected or complex outcomes emerging from the stories. Findings highlight the effectiveness of this narrative approach in capturing complex, unforeseen changes that may not be quantifiable through pre-defined performance indicators. The study contributes to evaluating EU-funded regional development programmes in tourism.
•Explore the power of ‘Most Significant Change’ technique as a story-based evaluation tool.•The method boosts ownership of evaluation amongst project partners.•The study uncovers less-known impacts of tourism intervention on local communities.•Challenges faced by small local authorities in evaluating tourism interventions.

Drawing on the cognitive micro-foundations of institutional theory, attention-based view, stakeholder salience framework, and threat-rigidity hypothesis, this study fills key gaps in our understanding of how tourism firms allocate their slack resources to social and environmental issues during crises. Our model was tested using survey data collected from the managers of tourism firms in Egypt and the UK after the last wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Structural equation modeling-based results indicated that normative pressures, threats, and issue urgency are significant determinants of socially responsible slack allocation. Urgency mediated all institutional pressures with slack allocation. Multigroup analyses revealed variations in institutional receptivity, issue interpretation, and slack allocation among Egyptian and British managers. This study contributes to micro-foundational and cross-cultural research on corporate social responsiveness and resource management. Our findings guide tourism firms in making optimal socially responsible investments and help policymakers set sustainable tourism strategies aligned with crises and businesses’ capabilities.

Drawing from the field of complex evaluations we discuss a novel application of process tracing for the evaluation of complex tourism interventions. We argue that to better evidence impact of tourism interventions and facilitate policy transfer we ought to adopt approaches to evaluation that allow us to deepen our understanding of causal mechanisms at play in an intervention. We adopt process tracing as a qualitative, theory-based evaluation method to make within-case causal inferences about impact. To showcase the method, we apply it to evaluate the outcomes of a real-world EU-Interreg sustainable tourism intervention called "EXPERIENCE," implemented across six pilot regions across France and England. We argue that deepening our understanding of how interventions work in a local context is necessary for the design and transferability of future interventions across similar contexts.