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that countries embracing tourism must also take
responsibility for ensuring that it is responsible
and sustainable (Goodwin, 2007).
Consequently, many researchers argued a fun-
damental question of what is the finest solution to
minimize the impact of tourism. Are these issues
reflecting the local residents' quality of life? What
are the Pangkor Island residences' perceptions
towards this development? In other words, does
responsible tourism concept may be the solution
and contribute to quality of life? With this notion,
in line with the absence of such study, an empiri-
cal research needed to be undertaken, particularly
looking at the responsible tourism development
practices from the local residence point of view.
leakages, and ensuring that communities were
involved in tourism planning. Responsible tourism
attempts to provide a comprehensive social expe-
rience while ensuring that socio-cultural diversity
maintained. Local cultures need to be presented
in an authentic way by allowing host communi-
ties to determine the manner of their presentation.
Responsible tourism focuses on the management
of natural diversity, sustainability, and appropriate
systems for minimizing waste and over-consump-
tion, integrate environmental considerations into
all economic considerations, and verify any devel-
opment is environmentally just.
While these three key goals of responsible tour-
ism development are equally indispensable, little
research efforts being given to exploring the social-
cultural facet of tourism (Brunt & Courtney, 1999).
Therefore, this study particular concentration is
devoted to developing a framework on responsible
tourism practices.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1
Responsible tourism
Responsible tourism is a management strat-
egy embraces planning, management, product
development and marketing to bring about posi-
tive economic, social, cultural, and environmen-
tal impacts. The term 'responsible tourism' has
emerged as a new gallows for developing and man-
aging tourism development. Responsible tourism
is still in the hypothetical phase. However, there
were growing inclinations of public awareness of
the harmful effects from negligent tourism devel-
opments. Husbands and Harrison (1996) define
responsible tourism as “a framework and a set
of practices that chart a sensible course between
the fuzziness of ecotourism and the well-known
negative externalities associated with conservative
mass tourism”.
The essential goal of responsible tourism is to
diminish and reduce the negative impacts. Concep-
tually, responsible tourism includes governments,
communities, investors, and visiting tourists know-
ing taking responsibility on their action to maxi-
mize the benefits of tourism while controlling the
negative ones. The main argument for responsible
tourism is the multi-level collaboration and stake-
holder involvement in policy making and develop-
ment planning. The involvement of stakeholders
may yield future benefits to a tourism destination
such as avoiding the cost of conflicts, enhancing
political realism, generating enhanced, effective
and innovative plans.
Responsible tourism development is expected
to reach the three following fundamental goals
(Scheyvens, 1999). The responsible practices pro-
mote equitable distribution of tourism benefits
among communities, the business sector, and tour-
ists themselves. Local economic benefits can be
maximized through increasing linkages, reducing
2.2
Responsible tourism facet
Moving forward, few researchers urged the respon-
sible tourism concept to be another alternative
tourism (Brunt & Courtney, 1999); (Carasuk,
2011). Settachai (2009) suggested future consid-
eration to investigate responsible tourism as a new
robust paradigm for developing and managing
tourism. Focusing on a narrow definition, respon-
sible tourism offers a comprehensive perspective on
the practical implication of tourism that cut across
many aspects of the community and involves mul-
tiple stakeholders. It is believed that the concept
may become an effective guidelines to support
and protect tourism planner from overwhelmed by
mass tourism.
This notion is supported by the World Tourism
Organization (2009) where responsible tourism is
not only aiming to the improvement of the desti-
nation damaged from mass tourism activities, but
it aims to provide benefits to the local residents in
terms of economy, environment and socio-cultural.
To ensure the sustainability of the resources (econ-
omy, environment and socio-cultural), responsible
tourism practices may help the industry by pre-
serving the future through natural and cultural
preservation (Carasuk & Fisher, 2008). Adapting
the unique setting of responsible tourism practices
in another country, (Stanford, 2006) stated that
the behavioral standard of practice in responsible
tourism consists of recycling, water conservation,
crime prevention and promoting local culture.
Gauteng Tourism Authority (2003) guidelines
for responsible tourism covered all aspects of the
development; stakeholder involvement, environ-
ment, practices and also benefit received by the
local residents. This responsibility merged together
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