Perceptions of Vietnamese tourism businesses toward the adoption of sustainable tourism practices

The richness of natural and cultural resources provides Vietnam potentials for tourism development. Unfortunately, after a long period of war and a "development-at-all-cost" economic policy in the 60's, 70's and 80's, the environment in Vietnam is in an alarming stage of degradation with various problems including soil erosion, water contamination, and an unbalanced biodiversity system. As the economic transformation process started in 1986, often known as doi moi, the Vietnamese government has shifted the economy from a strictly state controlled to an open-market policy. Light industries such as textile and tourism are in favor and agriculture remains crucial component of the economy. Protecting the environment and natural resources while achieving economic development is an important focus of doi moi. The government plans to achieve doi moi by promoting sustainable development with tourism being one of the key economic activities.; Empirical evidence shows that a successful sustainable tourism development (STD) program is often a collaborative effort among local communities, governments, tourists, businesses, and other related actors (Liu, 2003). While the roles of consumer demand, governmental policy, and Non-governmental Organizations in STD have been studied in various research, few studies have approached STD from a business perspective, especially businesses in developing countries like Vietnam. This research aims to narrow this gap in the literature by exploring Vietnamese tourism perspectives toward the adoption of STD practices. The theory of diffusion of innovations by Rogers (1995) is used as the theoretical framework for this study. Since the first publication in 1962, it has been widely applied across different scientific disciplines and cultural backgrounds and proven its consistency. However, it has never been applied in the Vietnamese context. Furthermore, considering the process of adopting STD practices as a diffusion of innovation process is unique to this study. To this extent, this study contributes to diffusion of innovation literature by extending the theory to a new cultural context and a new field of study.; The results of the survey among 149 tour companies and 497 hotels, of which 40% responded, show that the complexity of innovations and the benefits they may bring to the companies, especially marketing image, are the most important motivations to adopt STD practices. While the number of innovations being adopted by tourism companies is not correlated with the companies' sizes, the type of innovations being adopted is different between small and large companies. Because STD is at an early stage in Vietnam, tourism companies also demonstrate a skeptical attitude. They consider adopting STD practices as a risk-taking action which is illustrated by a strong correlation between risk-taking attitude measurement and the intention to adopt.; Based on these findings, some recommendations to Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) were also made in order to help plan a successful STD program. VNAT should follow a step-by-step course of action which may start from generating a list of standardized code of conduct or criteria for sustainable tourism practices. This list will help tourism companies to obtain a better estimate of innovation complexity as well as its benefits. VNAT also should encourage and sponsor several companies to be pioneers in STD and use them as examples for others to observe. Once a successful example is presented, skepticism toward STD will diminish and opportunities for STD in Vietnam will increase.