Tourist Perceptions of Solid Waste Management and Their Association with Satisfaction and Waste-Management Importance at Two Himalayan Destinations in India

Summed perception scales are widely used to compare visitor perceptions across destinations, yet the items in such scales need not hang together in the same way everywhere. Survey data from 763 tourists at Gulmarg and Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, were used to examine whether perceptions of waste services formed a coherent scale at both sites and how the importance visitors attach to waste management related to their satisfaction with it. Three items describing visible day-to-day conditions (litter, bin availability and bin maintenance) were internally consistent at Srinagar but not at Gulmarg, and simulation showed that the narrower spread of responses at Gulmarg accounted for only about a tenth of the gap. Visitors who rated waste management as more important were less satisfied at Gulmarg and more satisfied at Srinagar, a reversal that held across a range of robustness checks. Perceived litter was the strongest predictor of satisfaction at both destinations, while toilet cleanliness, segregation and dumping control showed no positive independent association. For destination managers, litter control and bin upkeep appear to be the conditions visitors register most directly. Where summed perception scores are meant to represent a single underlying impression, ranking destinations on them is risky unless the scale has been shown to work in the same way at each place; reporting each service separately is both safer and easier to act on.