Leveraging Technology Readiness for Ecotourism Competitiveness: Insights from Sarawak, Malaysia

Jun Zhou, Thong (2024) Leveraging Technology Readiness for Ecotourism Competitiveness: Insights from Sarawak, Malaysia. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

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Abstract

In this era of globalization, individuals are increasingly looking forward reconnection with the Mother Nature. The richness of destination resources in these destinations leads ecotourism to become one of the rapidly growing industries in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the literature relating to the destination resources and ecotourism competitiveness in totally protected areas (TPAs) is rather limited. Over the years, the emergence of technology advancement has led the ever-changing environment of tourism market to become even more transformative. In conjunction with post-COVID-19 or the endemic phase, countries across the world have taken initiatives in rejuvenating their national economic conditions. Nations or regions that adopted technology in their tourism destinations have generated better outcomes compared to those that do not. Thus, after conducting a review of the current literature on tourism and ecotourism destinations, the researcher identified gaps in the literature and proposed a research model. It is necessary to investigate and identify the factors that contribute to improving and advancing the competitiveness of ecotourism destinations. The main objective of the present research is to examine and provide empirical evidence on the interrelationships between core resources (i.e., natural resources and cultural heritage attraction), supporting resources (i.e., tourism infrastructure and quality of tourism services), self-efficacy, on ecotourism destination competitiveness (i.e., comparative and competitive advantage along with destination marketing efforts). Also, technology readiness was adopted as the moderating variable to testify its moderating impact in enhancing the relationship among the five predictors of ecotourism destination competitiveness. The research framework was underpinned using three underlying theories, namely Competitiveness Theory, Social Cognitive Theory and Theory of Technology Adoption. This study was conducted in nine of the ecotourism destinations in Sarawak using a quantitative approach and survey questionnaires as the research instruments for data collection. A total of 260 rows of data were used, primarily comprised respondents from the local industry players located in the study sites. Then, to assess the research model, WarpPLS (version 8.0) was used to perform the PLS-SEM analysis and findings revealed that seven of the direct hypotheses tested were supported. Besides, three of the moderating hypotheses were also supported, where technology readiness was discovered to have a positive moderating impact on natural resources and destination marketing efforts. Also, technology readiness was revealed to positively moderate the relationship between tourism infrastructure and comparative and competitive advantage along with destination marketing efforts. In sum, the present study offers significant enhancements to both scholars and practitioners’ understanding of the impact of core (i.e., natural resources and cultural heritage attraction), supporting (i.e., tourism infrastructure and quality of tourism services) resources and self-efficacy on the development of ecotourism destination competitiveness (i.e., comparative and competitive advantage along with destination marketing efforts) with the technology readiness among local industry players as the moderator that enhanced the relationship among the said variables. In addition, this study provides a basis for future researchers who are interested in the field of ecotourism studies to perform further investigations on the relationship among the constructs.

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