It is therefore necessary to change the models followed so far and start to implement practices based on social and environmental (Arrobas, 2020). Global development has given rise to growth in terms of technology, the media, and social networks incorporated in education, whose objective is to face this globalized environment and allow a greater interaction of the educational organization (Araujo & Ramos, 2014). In this perspective, education plays a fundamental role in the transmission of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that allow young people to have a critical and informed participation in the face of local and global challenges (UNESCO, 2016). On the other hand, education also has the function of deconstructing the resistance to change, functioning as a gear that enables a dynamic relationship between all stakeholders (Korstanje & George 2020, 347) and it is one of UNESCO's top priorities toward sustainable development since students need to learn how to act for our planet (UNESCO). To accomplish sustainable development goals, we need to change the way we think. To achieve a more sustainable world, as described in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and address all sustainability issues, individuals need to become change makers (European Commission Directorate General of Education Youth Sport and Culture., 2021).

Given the relevance of the theme of sustainability and the fact that education plays a very important role in the development of new behaviors, there exists a necessity to understand the perceptions and behaviors of the students. Do they have the needed knowledge to transform the tourism industry?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Over the years the awareness for a sustainable practice has grown as well as the government and community pressure over companies, encouraging them to make more conscious decisions when it comes to environmental responsibility (Swarbrooke, 1999). Despite the environmental damage caused by the economic development a part of the population still hasn’t adopted new behaviors maintaining a permissive attitude within social and legal restrictions (Middleton & Hawkins, 1998). By the end of 2019, the European Ecological Pact emerges to transform the European Union into an economy more efficient and competitive regarding the use of resources. To face the climatic change, there is a need to prepare the tourism industry to deal with the consequences, adopting measures that minimize the environmental impact, but at the same time make the community aware of the need to change behaviors, namely for environmental efficiency and carbon footprint reduction (Turismo de Portugal, 2020). The globalization process caused a need to communicate with diverse cultures, and education aims to face this globalized environment by facilitating this communication. It is urgent to educate for interculturality and citizenship (Araujo & Ramos, 2014). In 2016 the document "Education for Development Benchmark - Pre-School Education, Basic Education and Secondary Education" was approved to raise awareness and promote the right and duty of all people to participate in contributing to sustainable development. Education for development aims to contribute to the promotion of sustainable development through the implementation of public awareness strategies and educational activities (Cardoso; Pereira, 2016). The need to face global development challenges gave rise to the document Agenda 2030, approved by the United Nations. The 2030 agenda report defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be in force by 2030, it's divided into thematic areas education mentioned has one of the strategic axils, to promote a universal sustainable development of education worldwide (Relatório Voluntário Nacional, 2017). In Portugal, there are two types of education, regular and vocational. Regular education it’s a more general type of education, it teaches all the compulsory subjects for each course. These Scientific-Humanistic Courses are subdivided into four different areas, as stipulated by the Directorate-General for Education in Portugal (DGE): Science and technology, socioeconomic science, languages and humanities, and visual arts. Vocational training courses are also provided by the DGE, under the auspices of the National Agency for Qualification and Vocational Education (ANQEP). The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), (UNESCO,1997). defines vocational or technical education as teaching designed primarily to enable participants to acquire the practical skills, know-how, and understanding necessary to work in a particular field of profession or trade. These courses focus on a single area of study with a more practical component, better-preparing students who are sure of the path they want to follow, regardless of whether they want to continue it in Higher Education or not. Due to the need for education to address the growing challenges of sustainability, emerges the document “Education for citizenship-guidelines” (Cardoso; Pereira, 2016) which sets out the thematic areas to be worked on by schools within the scope of education for citizenship. In the 2018/2019 school year, Rule nº55/2018-National Strategy for Education for Citizenship, is implemented in Portugal. This rule regulates the process of curricular autonomy and flexibility in primary and secondary education and aims to train individuals as participatory citizens to exercise citizenship throughout life. In secondary education, there is an obligation to implement a reinforcement of the curricular component of citizenship and development through the creation of projects with students in various thematic areas. The thematic areas are divided into three groups and, in the first group, mandatory for all schooling cycles, the domain of sustainability and environmental education appears as an area to be worked on. In vocational education courses, in additionally to the discipline of citizenship and development, there is the discipline of integration area, which aims the transversely and meeting of knowledge from various disciplinary areas, to lead to the acquisition of knowledge for the development of competencies for insertion in the labor market (Vocational, 2005) . This discipline is divided by thematic areas being the sustainable development one of them. Even though sustainability is one of the themes to be addressed it’s not commendatory, the decision to choose this theme belongs to the schools and teachers. Contrary to what happens in higher education, there are no studies about sustainability in secondary education.

METHODOLOGY

Starting question and hypothesis

The need for education for sustainability is well recognized, as we can see from the literature mentioned above. Portugal, following the strategic axes for sustainable development, has been making some changes to the curricula, especially with the implementation of the discipline of citizenship and development with projects to be worked on within the scope of sustainability and the environment. However, there is still a predominance of environmental issues with little or no reference to the other pillars of sustainability (economic and social). Despite sustainability being an increasingly mentioned topic in the media and being a growing concern of governments, the curricula do not seem to show this concern. Of the studies found on education and sustainable tourism, all are aimed at higher education students, namely the studies: “Measuring tourism and environmental sciences students’ attitudes towards sustainable tourism” (Arrobas,2020). “What do tourism students know about sustainability and sustainable tourism? An exploratory study of Latin American students” (Camargo e Gretzel, 2017). Transformation for sustainability: The role of complexity in tourism students understanding of sustainable tourism” (Hales & Jennings, 2017) and “Will the future be greener? The Environmental Behavioral Intentions of University Tourism Students” (Pan, 2018). However, is it not also significant to assess the perceptions and attitudes of secondary school students (regular and vocational) on sustainable tourism, both as future consumers and as possible future professionals in the hotel and tourism industry? Are there different perceptions and attitudes between students in regular and vocational education? On the other hand, it is also important to analyze positive and negative attitudes to be able to model tourists' attitudes (Obradović, 2021). For this reason, this study aims to construct and validate a survey that could carry out an analysis of students’ perceptions and attitudes about sustainable tourism.

The Pilot Survey Construction

The original questionnaire was created based on four different authors (Table 1) and it was divided into eight dimensions (The concept of sustainability and sustainable tourism, environmental sustainability, social costs and benefits, economic costs and benefits, participation of local people, long-term planning, visitor satisfaction and a people-centered economy) in a total of 52 items. The survey used in this study was adapted by changing some items and adding others of greater interest to the target audience in question, it aimed to assess what students know and feel about issues related to sustainability, as well as the notion they have, of their competences and autonomy, to make decisions based on these same principles. Most of the questions were built according to a survey created by Choi & Sirakaya, (2005) on attitudes towards sustainable tourism (SUS-TAS), in the article “Measuring residents’ attitude toward sustainable tourism: Development of sustainable tourism attitude scale”, whose objective was to assess, through a scale, the residents' attitudes towards sustainable tourism. To access what students knew about sustainability and the sustainable tourism concept, and to create that dimension, the survey was based on the article “What do tourism students know about sustainability and sustainable tourism? An exploratory study of Latin American students by Camargo & Gretzel (2017). To develop the other dimensions, questionnaires from two other articles were used: "Students' perceptions and attitudes toward sustainable tourism development in Albania" by Dibra & Oelfke, (2013) and “University student’s perception on sustainable development: A case study from Turkey” by Tuncer, (2008). The questionnaire applied in this study consisted of 51 items divided into 8 sections, and the degree of agreement with phrases related to the 8 sections and items was measured. The sections were:

• The concept of sustainability and sustainable tourism
• Environmental sustainability
• Social costs and benefits
• Economic costs and benefits
• Participation of local inhabitants
• Long-term planning
• Visitor satisfaction
• People-centric economy

Table 1. Original Sustainable Tourism Survey.

It was prepared in Microsoft Forms and released by a link sent by email to all schools in the West zone with secondary and vocational education. Later it was extended to other schools in other districts, namely Lisbon, Aveiro, and Santarém. A test phase was carried out with a vocational education class where 16 students were surveyed. At this stage, some terms were changed to make it easier for students to understand some concepts. 200 responses were collected, 10 of which were not counted for analysis as they did not contain all the necessary data. This study took place in two phases: first, an analysis was carried out on all students, regardless of the type of education. Then, a comparison was made between the two types of teaching, to assess whether there are differences between the two types of education.

RESULTS

Profile of the participants

Regarding the ages of the respondents, they are between 15 years and 24 years old, with the majority being between 16 years old (25.3%), 17 years old (35.8%) and 18 years old (18.4%). 48.9% attend vocational education and 51.1% attend regular education, with 32.1% in the 10^th year (equivalent to the 1st year of vocational education), 41.1% in the 11^th year (equivalent to the 2^nd year of vocational education), and 26.8% in the 12^th year (equivalent to the 3^rd year of vocational education). Regarding vocational education courses, 22 courses were identified, with a higher incidence in the sports technician courses (14.7%) and the environmental and rural tourism courses (4.7%).

Construct Reliability

To assess if the study had reliability the survey was submitted to a reliability factor analysis. The first survey consisted of eight dimensions divided into 51 items, revealed good sampling adequacy for factor analysis (KMO test) and, although the variables were sufficiently correlated (Bartlett's < 0.0001), some items had correlations lower than 0.40, and 12 factors explained 67.63% of the total variance. According to Choi & Sirakaya, (2005) a used procedure to assess the quality of the items of a survey is to verify their scores and correlations, therefore all items with a factor load inferior to 0.40 and communality smaller than 0.50, were eliminated. After the elimination process, the KMO test measured 0.876 revealing that the sample was suited for analysis and the Bartlett test had a sig of 0.000, proving that the sample is homogeneous. The results now reveal that nine factors explained 69.66% of the total variance divided into 37 items. Therefore, the varimax rotation was applied to access the factor loading scores to re-design the dimensions for the survey. The ninth factor had higher loading values than other factors and, on that account, the survey was divided into 8 factors/dimensions (Figure 1). Table 2 displays the eigenvalues and factor loading from each item. To verify the reliability of the survey and determine its internal consistency, the test of Cronbach Alpha was applied (Table 3). The survey items were now divided according to the factor loading into the following dimensions: Factor 1: Sustainability and sustainable tourism concept (3 items; alpha 0.794), factor 2: environmental sustainability (8 items, alpha 0.918), factor 3: social costs and benefits (6 items, alpha 0.856), factor 4: cultural benefits (2 items, alpha 0.627), factor 5: economic costs and benefits (6 items, alpha 0.848), factor 6: long term planning and visitor satisfaction (7 items, alpha 0.901), factor 7: participation of local people (3 items, alpha (0.681) and factor 8: people-centric economy (2 items, alpha 0.684).

Figure 1. Factorial Elbow Graphic.

Table 2. Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Table 3. Cronbach’s Alphas per Dimension.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The main objective of this study was to create and validate a questionnaire that allowed us to assess the perception and attitudes of secondary school students about sustainable tourism, considering the obligation of secondary schools to implement the discipline of citizenship and development. The literature review involved research on the theme of sustainability and sustainable tourism as well as on the role of education for sustainability and the existing documents to train schools to transmit values and knowledge on this topic. Furthermore, the survey construction went through different phases the first being a literature review based on tourism researchers that would allow the creation of different dimensions and items of the questionnaire. The original survey was divided into 8 dimensions with 51 items in total. Therefore, the survey was first tested in a 16-student group to verify the need to change some terms so that it could be well understood. After some changes in some terms, the survey was applied, by Microsoft Forms, in schools in the western zone of Portugal, and later it was extended to other districts. A total of 200 responses were obtained. 10 of the responses were discarded due to insufficient data. The data collected was analyzed using SPSS, version 28 software. To verify the reliability of the survey a reliability factor analysis was carried out and the results indicated that some items had low correlations and were discarded. The varimax rotation was applied to verify the factor loading of each item so that the survey dimensions could be verified. The results showed that the dimensions needed some adjustments, although maintaining the 8 dimensions, now divided into 37 items. After the corrected item correlation, Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the reliability of the survey, with high accepted alpha results.

This research revealed that the survey can be applied to assess the perceptions and attitudes of students about sustainability and sustainable tourism. It will allow teachers of different disciplines, and those responsible for implementing projects in citizenship, to rethink the projects they implement with their students, to be able to work on the theme of sustainability, based on its three principles, economic, social, and environmental rather than just focusing on environmental issues. The references for citizenship education, and the suggestions for topics to work on, can be reassessed and adapted to work with more sustainability-related topics that include the three dimensions of sustainability. As a recommendation for future investigations, we suggest the application of the constructed and validated questionnaire, exploring which variables lead to more sustainable behaviors. In addition, to verify which external factors contribute to the students' perception and attitudes, and which is the best way to establish sustainable behaviors.

DATA AVAILABILITY

The data directly supporting the study results can be found on the website Mendeley data V1. doi 10.17632/789m7fd536.1, https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/789m7fd536/1.

DECLARATION OF COMPETING INTEREST

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  Table 1
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  Table 2
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  Table 3
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