Tourism Economics, 2014, 20 (2), 429–437 doi: 10.5367/te.2013.0283 Research note: Measuring tourism sustainability: an empirical comparison of different weighting procedures used in modelling composite indicators IVAN KOZ V IC ´ Institute for Tourism, Vrhovec 5, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: ivan.kozic@iztzg.hr. (Corresponding author.) JOSIP MIKULIC ´ Department of Tourism, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, J.F. Kennedy Square 6, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: jmikulic@efzg.hr. This paper compares three different procedures for weighting sustainability indicators in the construction of composite indicators of tourism sustainability (TS). The case of Croatian coastal destina- tions is used. The particular weighting procedures are: (a) factor analysis (FA); (b) expert panel survey; and (c) the equal weights technique. As the results of this study reveal, the weights attached to different sustainability indicators can differ significantly depend- ing on the weighting procedure used. Accordingly, inappropriate choice of weighting procedure could distort the relative importance of different sustainability indicators and thus could result in imper- fect decisions by policymakers. The authors argue that the suitability of factor analysis as a weighting procedure in the construction of composite indicators of TS is rather questionable. Keywords: sustainability; tourism; weighting procedure; composite indicator The measurement of tourism sustainability (TS) is an issue that receives increasing attention in contemporary tourism research. A considerable number of studies provide methodological guidelines in this area (Ko, 2001; 2005; Twining-Ward and Butler, 2002; Blackstock et al, 2006a; Hunter and Shaw, 2007; Chávez-Cortés and Maya, 2010), and several papers focus on the establishment of general or destination-specific indicator models (Vera and Ivars, 2003; Blackstock et al, 2006b; Choi and Sirakaya, 2006; Tsaur et al, 2006; White et al, 2006). Fewer studies have made an attempt to quantify TS comprehensively, either for a single destination (Tsaur et al, 2006) or, more recently, for multiple destinations (Pulido and Sánchez, 2009; Blancas et al, 2010; Castellani and Sala, 2010).