1. Introduction
With the rapid increase in global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and swift development of transportation technology, domestic and international tours have increasingly become entertainment for contemporary people. The majority of people would like to discover novel news, information, and life experiences through a series of tours. In addition, many local regions, areas, and communities also utilize tourism to expose their news, information, and culture to the public in order to attract more people to visit, which then develops the regional economy and reputation. In the wake of the booming tourism development, each ecological environment has confronted a bulk of unpreceded and irreversible destruction and hyper-pollutions [
1]. In order to effectively and efficiently diminish and minimize the shock of various destructions and hyper-pollutions from tourism, ref. [
2] has consolidated the expert ecological ideas into vocational principles to create ecotourism. Importantly, not every economic tourism activity destroys the environmental condition. By recognizing many ecological catastrophes in concrete species extinctions (such as indigenous species extinction) and abstract capital eliminations (such as aboriginal culture elimination), numerous national governments, local communities, and public residents have paid more attention to the economic development benefits with consideration to the diminishment of various environmental resources and hyper-pollutions. The empirical practice of ecotourism was implemented in lobbying for the environmental protection of phoenicopterus ruber on the northern wetlands of the Yucatán while the development of wharf construction was pursued; ref. [
3] advocated the ecological conservation of phoenicopterus ruber to attract more birdwatching tourists to perk up the local economy without destroying the local ecological environment. Originally, the beginning of the ecotourism concept focused on the balance between economic development and ecological protection in order to decrease the various impacts of tourism development on the ecological environment.
Through the higher transmission speed of wireless technology, the sources used to surf and download local information, such as local news, local real-time video, local transportation information, local on-time announcements, local festival schedules, etc., can also be used by local organizations to expose the local news, messages, and statements in real-time without time and space restrictions. Furthermore, people now would like to easily visit anywhere in the world, which depends on the swift development of transportation technology and convenient infrastructure [
4]. Therefore, according to the 2015 annual report of the World Conservation Congress (WCC), the global tourism industrial output value reached 1.2 trillion United States Dollars (USD) in 2014 and increased to roughly 4 trillion USD in 2018, accounting for 2 out of 11 jobs overall in the world. However, the global tourism industrial output value dropped to 800 billion USD in 2021 due to the 2019 global epidemic impact of the Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-1), indicating that tourism plays a critical role in contemporary society due to the rapid development of wireless and transportation technologies [
5]. Nature-based tourism is a major tourism sector, comprising more than 25% of the global travel market; however, tourism industrialists have overlapping and differing definitions and interpretations as well as few precise standards for ecotourism, nature-based tourism, or geo-tourism (based on geodiversity and geological heritage without the consideration of ecotourism). When examining the Taiwanese domestic tourism market, the industrial output value was still approaching approximately 100 billion USD under the severe shock of COVID-19, according to the 2021 annual report of the Tourism Bureau in Taiwan.
In the book,
Tourism, ecotourism, and protected areas, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), ecotourism is defined as “the environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and any accompanying cultural features—both past and present) that promotes conservation, has low visitor impact, and provides for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local populations” [
6]. “As the tour has become the mainstream activity in the contemporary society, the sustainability has also become the mainstream issue in the modern tourism because the more tourists are directly and obviously to bring in the more tourism output value” [
6].
For this reason, the WCC of IUCU has unanimously passed a resolution on the international standards for sustainable ecotourism in association with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 agenda for the sustainable development of the United Nations (UN) Department of Economic and Social Affairs. As for the Eco-friendly Development (ED) in ecotourism resolution from the WCC, the eleventh (sustainable cities and communities with decent work and economic growth), twelfth (responsible consumption and production), and fourteenth (life below water) SDGs are the measures recommended for sustainable economic growth, consumption, and production practices and the conserved and sustainable use of nature and natural heritage. In detail, the eleventh SDG aims to expedite, maintain, contain, and increase economic sustainability in order to advance the establishment of safe residential sections with disaster prevention for each individual. The twelfth SDG was created to ensure sustainably consumed and productive models and the fourteenth SDG was promoted for the sustainable development of ocean and water natural resources. In regards to the Responsible Management (RM) ecotourism resolution from the WCC, the fifth (gender equality), eighth (decent work and economic growth), ninth (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), and seventeenth (partnerships for the goals) SDGs are effective approaches for ecotourism organizations. The ecotourism organizations are supposed to have the responsibility of advancing gender equality in each employee to facilitate the efficient production of sustainable economic growth in order to expand the sustainable global collaboration relationship. Importantly, organizations in ecotourism should further establish safe, tolerant, innovative industrialization with disaster prevention [
7].
In terms of the Environmental Conservation (EC) in ecotourism resolution from the WCC, the thirteenth (climate action) and fifteenth (life on land) SDGs are effective goals for ecotourism organizations. Ecotourism organizations have to take aggressive actions to confront and diminish the impact of global climate change through a series of actions such as sustainable terrestrial ecosystem utilization and the sustainable management of forests as well as the avoidance of desertification, soil degeneration, and loss of biodiversity. With respect to the Genuine Ecotourism Experiences Provision (GEEP) in ecotourism resolution from the WCC, the fourth (quality education) and sixteenth (peace, justice, and strong institutions) SDGs establish the effective magnanimity of ecotourism organizations. Ecotourism organizations have to provide empirical experiences and provisional tour activities and programs to advance inclusive and equal quality education to establish the environmental conservation lifelong learning mechanism in order to strengthen an inclusive, equal, and sustainable society [
8]. In regard to the Responsible Tourist Behaviors Inducement (RTBI) in ecotourism resolution from the WCC, the sixth (clean water and sanitation) and seventh (affordable and clean energy) SDGs provide effective approaches for ecotourism organizations.
Ecotourism organizations are necessary to conduct the tourists in such a way as to maintain and protect the natural water, resources, energies, and sanitation structure throughout tourism activities. Ultimately, in reference to the Local Participation and Benefits Sharing (LPBS) ecotourism resolution from the WCC, the first (no poverty), second (zero hunger), third (good health and well-being), and tenth (reduced inequalities) SDGs indicate effective structures for ecotourism organizations. Ecotourism organizations have to plan for the diminishment of poverty through the accomplishment of food security and improvement of nutritional status in order to achieve good public health and well-being. Hence, ecotourism not only focuses on the expedition of environmental protection but also emphasizes cultural conservation as well as benefits the local economy by the presence of tourists to continuously achieve the sustainable triple-bottom balance between the earth’s environment, social humanities, and economic benefits [
9].
Therefore, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) have started to collect exhaustive ecotourism data to understand the complete performance and development of global ecotourism to construct the evaluated international standards and evaluated indicators of development of the suitability of global tourism from the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of the sustainable tourism information diagram in 2017, the year of international sustainable ecotourism [
10]. Subsequently, the UNWTO has devoted itself to developing a series of evaluation indicators through existing economic, environmental, and social international standards for instituting an easy and convenient evaluation framework to discuss, manage, and integrate the massive tourism-related data and information. This massive amount of information and data is able to provide and produce enough useful information for numerous tourism stakeholders, such as tourists, tourism industrialists, community residents and staff, tourism governments, etc. to administer and make suitable decisions for the empirical demands of residents in the sustainable development of global ecotourism [
11,
12].
Subsequently, the WCC has officially announced the One Program to request the director general, commissions, and members to support an initiative for the international standards in ecotourism at its session in Hawai‘i, United States of America, 1–10 September 2016 that (1) practically expands the sustainable tourism guidelines to cover the best ecotourism practices, including an updated IUCN definition of ecotourism, relevant standards and indicators for culturally sensitive community engagement and welfare, environmental learning, and appropriate infrastructure and tourist behaviors, to seek the prevention of a negative anthropogenic influence on species and ecosystems, (2) empirically implements, in existing national, regional, and international certification schemes, standards and guidelines focused on ecotourism in order to improve and promote conservation outcomes by encouraging the uptake of the best practices and adherence to and strengthening of globally accepted international standards, and (3) systemically designing, creating, and delivering a series of training opportunities for ecotourism governance, auditing, and certification as well as the implementation of the best practices for ecotourism development and management.
In regard to the development of Taiwanese ecotourism, the Tourism Bureau of the Executive Yuan officially established the Taiwan Ecotourism Association (TEA) in 2001 by organizing the government, civil powers, and resources to facilitate the ecotourism development in Taiwan with the aim of promoting the sustainable and wise use of Taiwan’s natural, cultural, and ecological resources in ecotourism. Based on the fundamental goals of the TEA, there are five main purposes: (1) conducting training courses and workshops covering multiple aspects of ecotourism; (2) promoting ecotourism by partnering with industries; (3) setting up a platform to consolidate efforts from all parties for ecotourism development, (4) establishing an evaluation and certification program to enhance the quality of ecotourism, and (5) reinforcing international cooperation and coordinating demands from international markets. In order to empirically elaborate on tourism operations, community development, biodiversity, geodiversity, geological heritage, places of geological interest, wildlife, and the natural environment, Taiwanese ecotourism must explore its sustainable determinants with the international standards.
However, the driving business contents and organization framework, the critical demand for contemporary Taiwanese ecotourism, and the evaluation indicators and certificates with international standards are the current severe shortages in the TEA. Therefore, after making a comprehensive survey of the research on ecotourism development in Taiwan, there was no one official study able to focus on detecting the sustainable determinants of Taiwanese ecotourism with international standards. In order to realistically provide the research evaluations and assessments of the sustainable determinants of Taiwanese ecotourism with the international standards of the Taiwanese government, parastatal ecotourism organizations and associations and ecotourism researchers, developers, and tourism industry professionals, as well as the national, regional, and international certification schemes, standards, and guidelines on this research topic were used to concentrate on ecotourism to encourage the adoption of international standards and norms with the updated IUCN definition and guidelines to be analyzed in-depth and discussed.
For this reason, these sustainable determinants are able to promote and seek auditing and certification for Taiwanese ecotourism in landscapes and seascapes of conservation value, according to international standards. In order to empirically explore the sustainable determinants of ecotourism with the international standards, the ecotourism destinations, accommodations, and tours have been defined as the analytical perspectives because the tours focus on the individual’s feeling, accommodations depend on the organizations in ecotourism, and the destinations assemble the local natural and cultural resources and assets. Then, the four creditable dimensions (management, social/community, cultural, and environmental issues) of the GSTC were classified as the appraised attitudes. Lastly, the six assessed dimensions of ecotourism resolution from the WCC, in association with the seventeen SDGs of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the twenty-nine assessed indexes of the KES ecotourism evaluations in connection with the six assessed dimensions of the ecotourism resolution from the WCC, were extensively discussed and considered as the evaluated criteria and sub-criteria in this research. Therefore, this research has innovatively employed the social learning theory (SLT) [
13] to form the main analytical hierarchy and concept of the three analytical perspectives (Ecotourism Tours, ET; Ecotourism Destinations, ED; and Ecotourism Accommodations, EA) in order to comprehensively appraise the interplays and dependences among ecotourism tours, destinations, and accommodation. The SLT was able to examine the correlations among the four essential issues (Management Issue, MI; Social Issue, SI; Cultural Issue, CI; and Environmental Issue, EI) of the GSTC, the six assessed dimensions of ecotourism resolution from the WCC, and the twenty-nine assessed indexes of the KES ecotourism evaluations in the main analytical hierarchy and concept, as reflected in
Figure 1.
The core reason the SLT was created was to extensively discuss the dependences and influences among individual behaviors, organizational operation, and performance as well as social development and tendency [
14,
15]. The individual behaviors of ecotourism tours were directly able to form the ecotourism accommodations of organizational operation and performance and reversely, the ecotourism accommodations of organizational operation and performance were also able to indirectly influence the ecotourism tours of individual behaviors because each individual is the basic unit of the organization [
16,
17]. In addition, the ecotourism accommodations of organizational operation and performance were directly instituted by the ecotourism destinations of social development and tendency, and conversely, the ecotourism destinations of social development were further able to dependently facilitate the ecotourism accommodations of organizational operation and performance [
18,
19]. Ultimately, the ecotourism destinations of social development and tendency immediately dominated the individual behaviors, and oppositely, the ecotourism tours of individual behaviors were able to potentially affect the social development and tendency because society is gathered and assembled from each individual as reflected in
Figure 1.
In statistical measurements, the Factor Analysis (FA) of quantitative analysis [
20] was applied to administer large-scale questionnaires for inducing the appraised commonalities among each attitude, criterion, and sub-criterion in the main analytical hierarchy of the SLT in order to achieve the highest validity and representativeness because the FA of quantitative analysis was created to identify and induce the critical determinants through large-scale questionnaires in the social research science fields. Importantly, the Analytical Network Process (ANP) [
21] of qualitative analysis was further employed to conduct the professional expert’s weighted questionnaires by measuring the assessments among each attitude, criterion, and sub-criterion in the main analytical hierarchy of the SLT in order to achieve the highest reliability and accuracy because the ANP was initially induced to systematically and hierarchically establish the evaluated model to testify the interconnections among these determinants.