During the last two decades, there has been increased focus on topics related to various aspects of sustainable tourism. Believing that sustainable tourism can be a serious alternative that can remedy some of the negative impacts associated with traditional tourism development, scholars and main stream tourism journals have dedicated much time and space in publishing ustainability related research. Although much distance have been covered in delineating the scope of sustainability research, there is hardly any work that tracks and understands support for such policies within the general public. After all, decision-makers are elected officials that must listen to their constituents and justify the positions they take. Hence, understanding and assessing support for sustainable tourism policies among the general population becomes paramount.

Turkey has become a very competitive country in the last 15 years; ranked number 9 among the most tourist receiving countries, it has paid scant attention in developing its tourism product in a more sustainable manner. However, the type of support that helped fuel the all inclusive, unsustainable mass tourism growth is fading among the more elite and concerned tourism developers. The industry recognizes that the current course in tourism is not sustainable. Against this background, the current study examines residents’ support for sustainable tourism policies within the general population of residents in a large city-Izmir, Turkey and the Island of Cyprus (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) using recently validated new version of SUS_TAS items.

Data for the study were gathered in Izmir (1817 respondents) and Cyprus (955 respondents) through interviewer-administered surveys. The Turkish Cypriot data were collected via telephone interviews with a random sample of 955 adults who were 18 years of age or older using a local market research company. Data from Izmir/Turkey were collected via a clustering sampling technique proportional to populations of city-districts using a face-to-face interview method with a group of 60 student interviewers. The makeup of Izmir’s population is akin to Turkey’s general population. Government agencies frequently collect data (e.g., CPI) in one or in some combination of the three largest metropolitan cities such as Izmir, Istanbul, and Ankara as collected data in any one of these cities are usually considered representative of the general population in the country.