Institutional Strategic Planning Capability for Sustainable Tourism Development: Evidence from Peruvian Municipal Governments

The participating municipality plays a central role in coordinating strategic planning, resource allocation, stakeholder engagement, monitoring, and digital governance to promote sustainable tourism development. However, limited empirical evidence exists on how these governance functions collectively operate as an integrated institutional capability. This study proposed and empirically assessed Institutional Strategic Planning Capability (ISPC) as a higher-order governance construct and examined its relationships with Collaborative Governance, Smart Destination Readiness, and Perceived Sustainable Tourism Development Performance in the Provincial Municipality Daniel Alcides Carrión, Peru. The conceptual framework was developed by integrating Dynamic Capabilities Theory, Stakeholder Theory, and the municipal tourism governance literature. A quantitative, explanatory, cross-sectional research design was employed using questionnaire data collected from 120 municipal employees involved in planning, finance, tourism, infrastructure, environmental management, and administration. The proposed framework was evaluated using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5000 bootstrap resamples. The higher-order ISPC construct was empirically assessed through indicator reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and higher-order construct assessment before evaluating the structural relationships, explanatory capability, and predictive performance of the model. The results demonstrate satisfactory initial measurement evidence across all constructs. ISPC exhibited significant positive relationships with Collaborative Governance and Smart Destination Readiness, while both governance mechanisms were positively associated with Perceived Sustainable Tourism Development Performance. The structural model demonstrated satisfactory explanatory power and predictive capability within the study context. The findings should be interpreted within the limitations of a cross-sectional, perception-based study conducted in a single municipality. The study contributes conceptually by proposing ISPC as an integrated higher-order governance construct and provides context-specific empirical evidence supporting evidence-based municipal tourism planning in the Peruvian context.