scholarly journals Sustainable Tourism Product Development: An Application of Product Design Concepts

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7957
Author(s):  
Marco Haid ◽  
Julia N. Albrecht

This study examines sustainable tourism products in tourism destinations. Based on concepts of sustainable product design, our study proposes a framework for sustainable tourism products by adapting an existing Design for Sustainability Framework to consider and analyze the characteristics and themes of sustainable (tourism) products as well as their impact and scope. Using a pragmatic qualitative approach, 15 semi-structured interviews with destination managers from the German-speaking Alpine region formed the empirical basis of the study. The results emphasize key themes and multiple characteristics associated with sustainable tourism products in tourist destinations, addressing all sustainability components and design innovation levels. This study is the first to apply existing sustainable product design concepts to destination contexts and discuss their applicability for sustainable tourism products. For practitioners, this study provides support for the development of sustainable tourism products and contributes to a better understanding of the effects and levels of these products as well as sustainability marketing.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3469
Author(s):  
Ji Han ◽  
Pingfei Jiang ◽  
Peter R. N. Childs

Although products can contribute to ecosystems positively, they can cause negative environmental impacts throughout their life cycles, from obtaining raw material, production, and use, to end of life. It is reported that most negative environmental impacts are decided at early design phases, which suggests that the determination of product sustainability should be considered as early as possible, such as during the conceptual design stage, when it is still possible to modify the design concept. However, most of the existing concept evaluation methods or tools are focused on assessing the feasibility or creativity of the concepts generated, lacking the measurements of sustainability of concepts. The paper explores key factors related to sustainable design with regard to environmental impacts, and describes a set of objective measures of sustainable product design concept evaluation, namely, material, production, use, and end of life. The rationales of the four metrics are discussed, with corresponding measurements. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the use and effectiveness of the metrics for evaluating product design concepts. The paper is the first study to explore the measurement of product design sustainability focusing on the conceptual design stage. It can be used as a guideline to measure the level of sustainability of product design concepts to support designers in developing sustainable products. Most significantly, it urges the considerations of sustainability design aspects at early design phases, and also provides a new research direction in concept evaluation regarding sustainability.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia M. O'Rourke ◽  
Carolyn C. Seepersad

Energy- and materials-efficient designs are highly valued in the context of sustainable product design, but realizing products with significant changes in efficiency is a difficult task. One means to address this challenge is to use biological analogies during ideation. The use of biological analogies in the design process has been shown to greatly increase the novelty of concepts generated, and many authors in the bioinspired design (BID) community contend that efficiency-related benefits may be conferred as well. However, there is disagreement in the field as to when, how, and why efficiency-related benefits might arise in BIDs. This work explores these issues in-depth. A review of BID literature and an empirical study of BIDs lead to a better understanding of the types of efficiency advantages conferred by BID and set the stage for the development of tools and methods to systematically generate more energy- and materials-efficient design concepts using biological analogies.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrette Clark ◽  
Justin Kosoris ◽  
Long Hong ◽  
Marcel Crul

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha Ali ◽  
Andrew J. Frew

Purpose – The aim of this research is to foreground information and communication technology (ICT) as an innovative approach for sustainable tourism (ST) development of destinations. ICT is the technology required for information processing which facilitates data processing, information sharing, communication, searching and selection. This paper concentrates on the Abernathy and Clark model and its usefulness in applying ICT as innovative in managing ST. Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was administered to destination managers and to eTourism experts. Destination managers were selected as they were identified as the person responsible for the overall management of a Destination Management Organisation. eTourism experts were identified as someone who possesses special expertise, knowledge and skills on ICT applications to tourism and offered expertise on which ranged from such areas as electronic distribution, recommender systems, user-generated content, online communities, mobile technology, technology acceptance, tourism networks and Web 2.0. This was followed by semi-structured interviews. Findings – These ICT tools were found to be innovative for information management and distribution for critical decision-making. Innovation was fostered through the use of ICT for ST by leading to a better understanding of the tourism product, monitoring, measuring and evaluating, forecasting trends, developing partnerships and engaging and supporting stakeholder relationships. ICT would provide novel ways of approaching marketing, energy monitoring, waste management, and communication for destinations. Originality/value – This research is important in demonstrating the value that technology can have to ST and further develops the work on tourism innovation theory.


2016 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Fahrul Hassan ◽  
Muhamad Zameri Mat Saman ◽  
Salwa Mahmood ◽  
Nik Hisyamudin Muhd Nor ◽  
Mohd Nasrull Abdol Rahman

To achieve sustainable product design, it is crucial to use sustainability assessment during the product design process. In this paper, numerous sustainability assessment methodologies in product design are reviewed. A comprehensive assessment of sustainability has been reported to present better performance for improving product sustainability. This review focused on the consideration of sustainability elements by previous researchers that have proposed integrated design tools, commercial software tools and combination both methods in supporting the methodologies. Based on this review, it can be concluded that the inclusion of sustainability performance among the assessment criteria in the design process activities is suggested as a critical point of concern which presents a challenge and is a great opportunity to develop useful guidelines or directions for industries or any product-based project so that the proposed approach will be accepted for implementation in the working environment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document