The Use of Sustainable Tourism Performance Information: Assessing the Impact on Small Municipalities' Policy‐Making and Management
研究基于意大利撒丁岛四个小城市的案例，探讨制度压力和组织因素如何影响可持续旅游绩效测量系统在政策制定和管理中的实际使用，发现制度压力启动使用，但组织因素决定是象征性遵从还是真正内化。
ABSTRACT This study investigates how Sustainable Tourism Performance Measurement Systems (STPMS), such as the European Tourism Indicator System (ETIS), are used in small municipalities’ policy‐making and management. Grounded in Institutional Theory, the research explores how coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures, together with organizational factors, influence the instrumental or conceptual use of sustainability performance information. The study employs a qualitative, multi‐case approach, drawing on four small coastal municipalities in Sardinia involved in the “Visit South Sardinia” (VSS) project. Based on 15 in‐depth interviews, 5 stakeholder meetings, and documentary evidence, the findings reveal a two‐phase trajectory: during the VSS project, institutional pressures, particularly normative ones, played a crucial role in initiating the instrumental use of ETIS. After the project's conclusion, although the normative pressure diminished, it continued to play a key role in influencing the development of a sustainability‐oriented culture and, indirectly, in promoting a conceptual approach to sustainability data. Overall, the findings reveal a dynamic and evolving relationship between institutional and organizational factors. While institutional pressures initiate change, organizational factors emerged as the real discriminants for whether municipalities limited themselves to symbolic compliance, discontinued the use of indicators, or instead appropriated the sustainability conceptually as a performance goal.