Culture, sustainability and tourism destination image: a comparative study on the sub-regions of Brazil

Abstract The use of 'sustainability' as a factor of market differentiation has been recurrent among tourism destinations. However, the image of these settings is not free of influence of external factors, such as culture. In countries with large territorial dimensions, such as Brazil, this phenomenon tends to be even more evident. This is because, in cultural terms, there is not only one, but five different 'Brasils' (Ribeiro, 1995). Thus, this study aims to analyze how the image of the sustainability of tourism destinations can be influenced by the cultural characteristics of the Brazilian consumers’ sub-regions of origin. The innovative character of the study stems from the adoption of an idiographic approach to the cultural dimensions of Hofstede (1980). Five focus groups were conducted among Brazilian nationals, within the different cultural regions of the country, and the data were analyzed through content analysis technique. The results showed that, from the five subregions analyzed, the 'Brasil Sulinas' presented a greater discrepancy regarding the image of the sustainability of tourism destinations. This fact was related to a higher propensity to values corresponding to high levels of masculinity and low aversion to uncertainties. On the other hand, the consumers from the other subregions tended to show similar patterns of thought among themselves, yet contrary to the 'Brazil Sulinas'.