Sustainable agritourism in Thailand: Modeling business performance and environmental sustainability under uncertainty

Abstract

This study aims to identify the causal attributes of sustainable agritourism in Thailand. Agritourism is a systematic approach based on farm diversification for tourism purposes. Agritourism is usually assessed with qualitative information. However, the assessment of agritourism attributes involves considering the interrelationships among the attributes. Prior studies on sustainable agritourism do not identify and address interrelated attributes using qualitative information. This study applies the Delphi method to identify a set of valid attributes. Moreover, this study applies triangular fuzzy numbers to transform the qualitative information into comparable values and uses a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory to identify the interrelationships among the attributes in the causal model. The results show that sustainable business performance and rural economic conditions are the key drivers of environmental sustainability. This result suggests that the attributes that may potentially stimulate sustainable agritourism are the development and implementation of an agritourism-specific plan, the development of a local business value chain, and government-led tourism promotion.