Exploring responsible tourism development facet - Theory and Practice in Hospitality and Tourism Research - page 175

with the tourism activities through stability and
sustainable design that includes environment,
economy and socio-cultural (Ramchander, 2004).
The concept also enables local residents to have
a better quality of life where socio-economic and
environment targeted to increase.
Responsible tourism practices need to be clearly
understood avoiding ignorance towards other
ideas that broadly shares a similarity among each
other. As a new development concept, responsible
tourism is still in the conceptual building stages.
It reflects growing trends of rising public aware-
ness of the harmful effects and irresponsibility
of numerous tourism activities (Settachai, 2009).
(Spenceley et al., 2002) added that responsible
tourism practices may come from social respon-
sibility and ethical dimension based on the local
perspectives. Therefore, the responsible tourism
practices assessment was narrowed down to the
local's insight on the practices.

measured and quite exploratory in nature, the
determination of how and to what extent the
observed indicators are linked to the construct of
the destination competitive strategy was necessary.
Typically, the principal factors derived from EFA
are represented as correlations between sets of
various interrelated variables.

4 RESULT

4.1 Exploratory factor analysis
The results of varimax rotation were reported so
that the extracted factors were independent and
not correlated with each other. The sample size
( N 246) was study enough to run the factor

analysis because it is generally recommended that
a ten-to one fraction of the sample size is accept-
able (Hair, et al., 1998). Consequently, a total of
16 items of support for responsible tourism prac-
tices was utilized for EFA. As an initial analysis,
the Anti-image matrix indicated that most of the
values were negative or had a little value of partial
correlation. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value was
0.77 conforming the partial correlations among
variables are adequate. Basically, these examina-
tions confirmed that since the initial analysis was
sufficient, further factor analysis was possible.

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3 METHOD

3.1 Approach and sampling
(Leedy & Ormrod, 2005) suggested that in order
to determine the variables with the purpose to
explain, predict and control the phenomena, the
quantitative data approach is the most appropriate
procedure in achieving the goal of the study. It is
supported by Abeyasekera and Savitri (2000) where
quantitative data analysis may provide an excep-
tional value to the researcher to produce signifi-
cant findings from a large amount of information.
In line with the above concept, variables were
adapted from few researchers, combined and EFA
was used to determine the variable dimensional
structure (Spenceley et al., 2002); (Ramchander,
2004); Settachai, 2009). Information was obtained
through a self-administered questionnaire towards
the local residents. Furthermore, a cross-sectional
approach also was used in this study and variables
were measured at the same period of time. Quota
sampling technique was used to obtain representa-
tive from the whole group of islands for a broad
range of areas. 246 questionnaires were completed
from 300 respondents approached, representing
82 percent response rate for this study. Descriptive
statistic was used to analyze the average score for
each item tested.

4.2 Descriptive analysis
Mean score obtained from descriptive statistic
pertaining to the locals' perceived value towards
responsible tourism practice were reported in this
section. Looking at the mean score in (Table 2),
most of the respondents agreed towards all items
in this dimension. The means of 3.0 to below 4.0
suggest the viability of responsible tourism prac-
tice in Pangkor Island.

5 DISCUSSION

As presented in Table 1, two factors were derived
from the 16 responsible tourism practices items.
All of the factor loadings were over 0.60 and had
an eigenvalue 1.0. The first factor explained 25.17

percent of the variance. This factor was termed
“Responsible Destination Planning” on the basis
of the interpretation of the overall item context.
The item with the highest loading was “Develop-
ment strategies and action programs are specifically
set up and adapted to achieve goals”. The second
factor explained 23.79 percent of the variance.
This factor was termed “Responsible Environmen-
tal Practice” since all of the variables loading on
this factor were related to environmental items.

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3.2 Factor analysis
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted to
determine the links between the observed indica-
tors for unknown or irregular construct. Since
the measurement scale in this study was recently