TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of sustainable tourism certification in developing countries and to present methodological and practical critiques and improvements.Design/methodology/approach– The study uses methodological refinements of fuzzy logic and comparative analysis based on fieldwork in seven countries.Findings– Sustainable tourism programs should be locally designed with local logos, largely performance‐based, and aggregation should be based on fuzzy logic concepts of necessary and jointly sufficient attributes of sustainable tourism.Originality/value– The paper uses political science concepts of state capacity and methodological advances of fuzzy logic to provide keys for successful sustainable tourism certification programs in developing countries. VL - 5 IS - 3 SN - 1750-6182 DO - 10.1108/17506181111156961 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/17506181111156961 AU - Bowman Kirk S. ED - Leonardo Dioko ED - Rich Harrill PY - 2011 Y1 - 2011/01/01 TI - Sustainable tourism certification and state capacity: keep it local, simple, and fuzzy T2 - International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 269 EP - 281 Y2 - 2024/04/23 ER -