The Moderating Role of State Regulation on Stakeholder Market Orientation and Sustainability Performance at Tourism Destinations

Introduction

Tourism as an industry has grown tremendously in recent years and its importance to nations, regions, communities, cities, towns and specific destination cannot be underestimated. The travel and tourism sector has contributed 10.3% to the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and contributed 330 million jobs globally {World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC, 2019)}. In Ghana, the travel and tourism sector is the third contributor to GDP. The sector contributed in total GHS12, 573m to Ghana’s GDP in 2017, or 6% to total GDP and 5.5% in 2018 (WTTC, 2018). There are a lot of potentials in this sector and governments and the private sector are investing heavily in infrastructure such roads, power, pipe borne water as well as coming out with good regulatory frameworks to regulate tourism and its related industry. When governments are able to effectively and efficiently regulate the stakeholders then the industry can reap the huge investments in the sector. Tourism destinations (TD) are subsets of destinations that need special attention due their peculiar nature in terms of the role they, can play in improving the status of the rural populations, contributing to sustainable income of nations and conserving natural and social environment of the TDs (Peña, Jamilena, & Molina, 2013). TDs offer unique offerings that give visitors memorable experiences in order to build competitive advantage (Musa, Kayat, & Thirumoorthi, 2010). However, tourism destinations are saddled with some challenges, for instance, low investments in infrastructure such as roads, water, power, and as a result make these destinations somewhat unattractive. Improvement in tourism destinations do not translate only into the physical landscape of the destination but also the social life of the community in general (Hwang, Stewart, & Ko, 2012).

The above benefits to the nation might be cut short due to human activities that threaten the continuous survival of natural vegetative cover, animals, landmarks and water bodies which are used as attractors to the tourism destinations. Bad mining practices, bad farming practices, excessive bushfires and global climate change are destroying the green vegetative cover, the animals and water bodies of the destinations. These strategic natural resources serve as the tourist destinations for the country. The forest vegetation in Ghana, for instance, has seen massive deterioration with 80% of it disappearing in the past 100 years. The forest reduced from 8.2 million hectares to 1.6 million hectares with an annual depletion rate of 65000 hectares (Forestry Commission (FC), 2018). The country has lost the quality and quantity of its water bodies as a result of illegal mining called “galamsey” and other human activities like farming and bush burning. These unsustainability human activities pose a lot of threat to the natural resources of the country hence demand immediate action to stop the continuous destruction of these strategic natural resources. This calls for all stakeholders to come on board to put in sustainability policies and practices to prevent such deterioration to these natural resources. One option that will help in tackling this deterioration is through stakeholder management of these natural resources where stakeholders would commit to putting in resources to prevent further destruction by way of behavioural change which will support the existence of these strategic natural resources that form the tourism destinations of Ghana.

One business strategy that can be adopted by TDs is Stakeholder Market Orientation (StMO). The researcher therefore conceptualized StMO as a broad network of destination’s stakeholders that establish relationships among themselves with the aim of gathering market information and other resources, exchange them among the stakeholders to be used to make strategic marketing decisions that benefit all stakeholders at the destination to achieve long term survivor of the resources of the destinations that translate into providing sustainability superior services to their customers and other stakeholders (Narver & Slater, 1990; Jaworski & Kohli, 1993; Polo Peña et al., 2013; Mahmoud, Blankson, & Hinson, 2017).