A modernism-based interpretation of sustainable tourism

To promote knowledge creation and transfer, this study adopts a modernism-based interpretation to reduce the conceptual vagueness and the terminological confusion of sustainable tourism. On the basis of the intensional definition techniques, namely, etymology and genus-and-differentia, the precising and theoretical definition of sustainable tourism was constructed. Specifically, sustainable tourism was identified as a resource-concerned tourism development ethic with human needs for growth, ideology for continuity, and global context as main constructs. This conceptual framework levels up sustainable tourism as a tourism development concern rather than a specific tourism form, thereby contributing to consistent communication in both academia and practices.