Developing a Measurement Model for Tourism Destination Competitiveness in Nigeria: Scale Development and Validation Study

This study develops and validates a psychometrically robust measurement model for tourism destination competitiveness specifically calibrated for the Nigerian context, addressing a critical methodological gap that impedes systematic competitiveness monitoring and cross-destination benchmarking within the country. Global destination competitiveness frameworks such as the World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index are not operationalised at the sub-national destination level in Nigeria and do not adequately capture informal economy contributions, security-related competitiveness dimensions, and cultural product quality factors salient to Nigerian tourism competition dynamics. A scale development methodology following Churchill's paradigm and subsequent refinements by MacKenzie and colleagues is applied across four stages: domain conceptualisation through literature review and expert panel interviews; item generation through qualitative research with 28 destination management experts; quantitative item purification with a development sample of 320 tourism industry respondents; and confirmatory validation with an independent holdout sample of 380 respondents across 12 destination areas. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, reliability testing, and convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity assessments are conducted. The resulting Destination Competitiveness Scale for Nigeria comprises 42 items loading on eight empirically validated dimensions. A companion Destination Competitiveness Index computation methodology is also developed enabling cross-destination scoring using secondary data sources. The scale is applied to benchmark 12 Nigerian tourism destinations, generating the first evidence-based competitiveness ranking of Nigerian sub-national destinations. Keywords: destination competitiveness, scale development, measurement model, Nigeria, benchmarking