Correspondence: Erick T. Byrd, Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA. Tel: +1 336 334 3041; Fax: +1 336 334 3238

¹is an assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Tourism, and Hospitality Management at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His current research interests focus on community participation in tourism development.

²is an assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Tourism, and Hospitality Management at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His current research focuses on the involvement and understanding of stakeholders in the sustainable tourism development process.

³is an assistant professor in the Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration Program in the Natural Resources Management Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her research interests are in sustainable tourism development and agritourism.

Received 18 January 2008; Revised 18 January 2008; Published online 28 July 2008.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a tool to better understand a community's knowledge of sustainable tourism principles. An assessment tool was developed to help identify factors of a community's knowledge of sustainable tourism. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to determine the latent structure of the set of variables. Five factors of a stakeholder's understanding of sustainable tourism development were identified in this study. These factors were (1) natural resources, (2) planning, (3) economic concerns, (4) educational needs, and (5) awareness of tourism.