A modernism‐based interpretation of sustainable tourism

To promote knowledge creation and transfer, this study adopts a modernism‐based interpretation to reduce the conceptual vagueness and the terminological confusion of sustainable tourism. On the basis of the intensional definition techniques, namely, etymology and genus‐and‐differentia, the precising and theoretical definition of sustainable tourism was constructed. Specifically, sustainable tourism was identified as a resource‐concerned tourism development ethic with human needs for growth, ideology for continuity, and global context as main constructs. This conceptual framework levels up sustainable tourism as a tourism development concern rather than a specific tourism form, thereby contributing to consistent communication in both academia and practices.