An ANP Approach to Assess the Sustainability of Tourist Strategies for the Coastal NP of Venezuela

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1 5 th International Vilnius Conference EURO Mini Conference Knowledge-Based Technologies and OR Methodologies for Strategic Decisions of Sustainable Development (KORSD-2009) September 30 October 3, 2009, Vilnius, LITHUANIA ISBN M. Grasserbauer, L. Sakalauskas, E. K. Zavadskas (Eds.): KORSD-2009 Selected papers. Vilnius, 2009, pp Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, 2009 Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 2009 An ANP Approach to Assess the Sustainability of Tourist Strategies for the Coastal NP of Venezuela Mónica García-Melón 1, Tomás Gómez-Navarro 2, Silvia Acuña-Dutra 3 1, 2 Departamento de Proyectos de Ingeniería Project Engineering Department, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Spain 3 Departamento de Estudios Ambientales, Universidad Metropolitana. Caracas. Venezuela 1 mgarciam@dpi.upv.estgomez@dpi.upv.es; 2 tgomez@dpi.upv.es mgarciam@dpi.upv.es; 3 sacuna@unimet. edu.ve Abstract: Making decisions towards sustainable development is an activity which concerns high level of uncertainty. In the present paper a study about sustainable tourism management of national parks is presented. A case study approach for coastal national parks (NP) of Venezuela is used. Tourism could contribute to the sustainability of NP but currently it is mainly causing their largest environmental impacts. Government of Venezuela and its natural park managers are therefore looking for new sustainable touristic development strategies. To help managers making decisions about this sustainability a new multicriteria approach based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP) technique is proposed. ANP provides a more truthful approach for modelling complex situations such as touristic sustainability because it allows the general study of the quantitative and qualitative explanatory variables and the incorporation of feedback and interdependence relationships among variables. A case study has been carried out with the help of two experts closely related to the 12 coastal NP analyzed and 8 stakeholders of the coastal NP Los Roques who supplied most of the information needed. Keywords: MCDA, ANP, Sustainable Tourism, sustainability indicators. 1 Introduction According to several authors (Cottrell and Vaske 2006), a certain type of tourism is desirable for national parks (NP) as it could contribute to economic development for the inhabitants, provide funding for maintaining their environmental values, increase the environmental education of the tourists, and even increase the population s concern towards the conservation of NP. Nevertheless, tourism is an anthropic pressure which some authors argue is the main environmental burden in some NP (Tubb 2003). In fact, generally this pressure degrades the natural values of the protected areas resulting in lower amenity value for tourists. Therefore, tourism must be considered (and proposed) as a driving force for sustainable development, not as an aim in itself. Coherently, there is a need to assess the contribution to sustainability of the touristic strategies. 235

2 M. García-Melón, T. Gómez-Navarro, S. Acuña-Dutra Assessing the sustainability of any proposed plan or policy means having a model to which compare the proposal: objectives, thresholds, indicators, etc. It is well known such a model is really difficult to obtain because it needs to consider a high number of variables and the relationships among them, which are usually complicated to set. Besides, it is necessary to estimate the evolution of the variables in a lifespan of at least several decades. Hence, assessing sustainability involves dealing with a large amount of uncertainty (Lavapuro et al. 2008). Firstly, because variables are arranged into nets, in which each one influences direct or indirectly many others, and secondly because of the large time spans. On the other hand, for a model to be accepted, it has to arise from a consensus among the stakeholders as much as possible. Otherwise some of the development agents may feel the assessments biased. Thus, they may not support the decisions or strategies selected according to the model (Grundey 2008). Therefore, and as some authors conclude, decision making in the field of sustainable tourism means building consensus about sustainability models and, also, asking the main stakeholders to assess strategies and discuss them together (Videira et al. 2003). 2 Theoretical background of the ANP model Several authors (i.e. Leskinen 2007, Gómez-Navarro 2009) have indicated the importance of accurately modelling reality when making decisions in projects that will affect sustainability in one way or another. In particular, Leskinen (2007) has proved the effects of the end model of the problem when the aim of the decision is the preservation of the environment. Multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) techniques are very appropriate to solve this type of problems. The expression MCDA is used as an umbrella term to describe a number of formal approaches which seek to take explicit account of multiple criteria in helping individuals or groups explore decisions that matter. Most of the MCDA techniques work well under the assumption of the independence of criteria. However, this assumption is not always realistic, and for sure not in the field of sustainability assessment (Gómez-Navarro 2009). Thus, bias can occur when using any of these methods and this can lead to non-optimal evaluations. For that, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) is chosen as it takes into account the interdependence among the criteria. The ANP is a method proposed by Saaty (2001). It provides a framework for dealing with decision making or evaluation problems. It presents its strengths when working in scenarios with scarce or uncertain information. It is based on deriving ratio-scale measurements to be used to allocate resources according to their ratio-scale priorities, whereas ratio-scale assessments, in turn, enable considerations based on trade-offs. ANP generalizes the problem modelling process using a network of criteria and alternatives (all called elements), grouped into clusters. All the elements in the network can be related in any possible way, i.e. a network can incorporate feedback and interdependence relationships within and between clusters. This provides an accurate modelling of complex settings and allows handling the usual situation of interdependence among elements in sustainability assessment scenarios. It is very important to count on the participants involved throughout the evaluation and interpretation processes. Therefore, the aim of this proposal is not to substitute the work of any of the assessment experts but, on the contrary, to ease and facilitate it. The experts opinions and judgments are the only ones to be taken into account and to be the input data in the evaluation model. Details on the Analytic Network Process (ANP) can be found in Saaty (2001), however, the main steps are summarized here for completeness: (i) Pairwise comparisons on the elements and relative weight estimation, (ii) Construction of the original supermatrix (unweighted supermatrix), (iii) Constructing the weighted supermatrix and (iv) Calculation of the global priority weights for all the elements from the limit supermatrix. 236

3 AN ANP APPROACH TO ASSESS THE SUSTAINABILITY OF TOURIST STRATEGIES FOR THE COASTAL 3 Case study: Evaluation of the sustainability of touristic strategies for coastal national parks of Venezuela In this paper we present a procedure for national park managers. It is intended to help assessing the sustainability of touristic strategies based on the ANP. The procedure is shown in figure 1 and at the beginning makes use of experts to model the sustainability of national parks with similar characteristics (in this case the coastal NP). For the model, experts are demanded to think in terms of criteria to assess touristic strategies. The set of criteria must accomplish the following requirements: to be related to sustainability indicators (pressure, state, response, impact and driving forces), to be structured in clusters and complete, to be non-redundant and to be easy to understand for the different stakeholders. INVOLVED AGENTS ANP facilitators Arrange the experts' panel Experts/ANP facilitators Understand the problem and the procedure Experts Select/design sustainability indicators Structure and relate sust. indicators Experts/ANP facilitators Stakeholders/ANP facilitat. Apply ANP to obtain the clusters' model Apply ANP to prioritise the sust. indicators Feedback ANP facilitators Aggregate stakeholders' priorities NP Managers Inform to national park managers Figure 1. General assessment procedure Afterwards, the model is presented to the stakeholders involved in touristic exploitation of a particular coastal NP: Los Roques. They are asked to prioritise the elements of the model. Stakeholders for this problem are: tourist, NP managers, tour-operators, environmentalists and scientists, inhabitants, government representatives, etc. In this step feedback is possible in order to include stakeholders suggestions in the experts model. This prioritisation is necessary as criteria are not of equal importance. Every stakeholder obtains a different prioritisation as explained in the discussion of the results. Then, in order to build a consensus about the importance of the criteria, a discussion is promoted among stakeholders. The debate allows stakeholders to defend their prioritisations and understand the others preferences and choices. When writing this paper the discussion is still taking place and thus the aggregation by means of the geometric mean, suggested by Saaty (2001) for these cases is here proposed. 3.1 Selection of the experts and design of the network model For the studied case two NP managers contributed to establish the network model according to the ANP procedure (see figure 2). End criteria were: 237

4 M. García-Melón, T. Gómez-Navarro, S. Acuña-Dutra c1 Water quality c8 Solid waste generation c2 Landscape beauty c9 Water waste generation c3 Species habitat c10 Biodiversity changes c4 Education level c11 Private inversion level c5 Existence of public services c12 Public institutions support c6 c7 Other economic activities, different form tourism Per capita income c13 Existence of plans and norms for the park Figure 2. Network model for the case study 3.2 Prioritising the sustainability indicators (model criteria) The stakeholders were interviewed and they were informed on the ANP methodology and its applications in criteria prioritisation. After solving every questions asked by the stakeholders, a questionnaire was designed using pairwise questions in order to allow for the comparison analysis. Table 1 shows a sample of the questionnaire used for criteria comparison. In order to alleviate the mathematical burden the following calculations were implemented through the software Superdecisions : 1. Upon completion of all pairwise comparison matrices, the unweighted supermatrix was built 2. The corresponding priorities of the clusters were afterwards obtained and used to weight this matrix. That way the weighted supermatrix was obtained. 3. Raising the weighted supermatrix to limiting powers until the weights converge and remain stable the limit supermatrix will be achieved 238

5 AN ANP APPROACH TO ASSESS THE SUSTAINABILITY OF TOURIST STRATEGIES FOR THE COASTAL Table 1. Sample of questionnaire used for criteria comparison C1: Water quality vs C2: Landscape beauty With respect to the sustainability of the natural park Los Roques, which criterion do you consider more important? To what extent? X C1 C2 X 7 9 The priority of each criterion is a non-dimensional value that will be considered a Tourist Sustainability Indicator (TSI). This priority can be obtained from the values in any of the columns of the limit supermatrix. Since eight stakeholders were interviewed, a total amount of eight individual limit matrices were obtained, each of which shows the indicators according to the opinion of one stakeholder. Figure 3 shows the results of a particular stakeholder: the NGO environmentalist and the aggregated prioritisation with the global TSI. NGO environmentalist Global Biodiversity Water quality Existence of 0,200 Landscape 0,150 Public 0,100 Species habitat Private 0,050 0,000 Education level Existence of Water quality Existence of 0,200 Landscape 0,150 Public 0,100 Species habitat Private Biodiversity 0,050 0,000 Education level Existence of Water waste Solid waste Per capita Other economic Water waste Solid waste Per capita Other economic Figure 3. An individual prioritisation and the global prioritisation for the case study These global TSIs are calculated by aggregating the priorities obtained for each expert. According to Saaty (2001), the best way to aggregate priorities when working with ANP is the geometric mean. As it can be seen, criteria Per capita income and Species habitat are the most valuated for the coastal NP Los Roques, while criteria Landscape beauty and Educational level are the least valuated. 4 Conclusions This paper presents a new approach for defining and assessing the sustainability of touristic development strategies in an efficient and reliable way. It has been applied to coastal national parks and particularly to the NP Los Roques. The method consists of the calculation and combination of sustainability indicators (environmental, social, political and administrative) by means of the ANP method and the experts and stakeholders opinions. This way the methodology allows dealing with the uncertainty of such problems making use of experts opinions and pairwise comparisons. Experts have identified the sustainability indicators to be used as ANP criteria and their relationships, hence the network model for sustainability. Besides, consensus is built among all stakeholders by asking them to assess the importance of the model criteria by means of goal-oriented questionnaires designed by the authors. They were also asked to express their satisfaction with the model and the efficacy and traceability of the procedure. 239

6 M. García-Melón, T. Gómez-Navarro, S. Acuña-Dutra Regarding the results obtained, individual priorities show big differences among opinions. This was to be expected since stakeholders hold very different point of views towards the sustainable development of Los Roques. Also every individual prioritization shows great differences among the tourism sustainability indicators (TSJ), while the global TSI priorities show a more compensated profile. Finally, in this paper the experts priorities have been aggregated by calculating their geometric mean. However, the future work of this research will be devoted to build as much as possible a consensus among the stakeholders of the National Park Los Roques. References Cottrell, S.; Vaske, J A Framework for Monitoring and Modeling Sustainable Tourism, e-review of Tourism Research (ertr) 4(4): Gómez-Navarro, T.; García-Melón, M.; Silvia Acuña-Dutra; Díaz-Martín, D An environmental pressure index proposal for urban development planning based on the analytic network process, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 29(5, September): Haider, K.; Williams, W.; Englund, P Stated preferences of tourists for eco-efficient destination planning options, Tourism Managment 28(2): Lavapuro, M.; Lipponen, A.; Artimo, A.; Katko, T. S Groundwater sustainability indicators: testing with Finnish data, Boreal Environment Research 13(5): Leskinen P Comparison of alternative scoring techniques when assessing decision maker's multiobjective preferences in natural resource management, Journal of Environmental Management October 85(2): Saaty. Th Decision Making with interdependence and feedback. The Analytic Network Process. RWS Publications. Pittsburgh. Tubb, K An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Interpretation within Dartmoor National Park in Reaching the Goals of Sustainable Tourism Development, Journal of Sustainable Tourism 11(6): Videira, N.; Antunes, P.; Santos, R.; Gamito, S Participatory modelling in enviromental decisionmaking: The Ria Formosa Natural Park Case Study, Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management 5(3): Grundey, D Managing Sustainable Tourism in Lithuania: Dream or Reality? Technological and Economic Development of Economy 14(2):