Manuel Alector Ribeiro

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.

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.

This book offers a fresh perspective of on some of the cutting-edge methodological approaches being used among scholars conducting work on social impacts of tourism. These works are international in focus, spanning across Europe (e.g., Austria, Croatia, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey) and Asia (e.g., Hong Kong, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Turkey). The authors employ qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods designs and some of the notable focus areas include comparative studies of residents’ perspectives of tourism (i.e., involving impacts of various forms of tourism and community children’s perceptions of tourism); statistical techniques such as multigroup invariance analysis and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis; and the employment of novel measurement tools such as the implicit association test involving residents’ implicit stereotypes of visitors from multiple countries and the utilization of the human-scale development to identify residents’ needs and satisfiers. This edited volume will most assuredly advance the methodological focus of research on social impacts of tourism moving forward.

This book will be of great interest to all upper-level students and researchers in tourism, planning and related fields. The chapters in this volume were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

This book provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the use of theory in the body of research centred on social impacts of tourism. Theory is advanced in three primary forms within this volume. Some apply novel frameworks (e.g., theory of interaction ritual; degrowth paradigm; and mere exposure theory) to contexts involving destination residents. Others consider various uniquely complemented theoretical frameworks (e.g., social exchange theory and affect theory of exchange; Weber’s theory of rationality and Foucauldian constructs; and emotional solidarity and cognitive appraisal theory). Still others develop theoretical frameworks (e.g., influence of presumed influence model, elaboration likelihood model, and social exchange theory; tourist-resident social contact; quality of life; and socio-ecological systems theory and chaos theory) for others to potentially consider and test. The chapters in this edited volume contribute to the evolving advancement of theoretical applications within the research area of social impacts of tourism.

This book will be of great interest to all upper-level students and researchers in tourism, planning and related fields. The chapters in this volume were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Sustainable Tourism.