Sustainability assessment of tourism in protected areas: A relational perspective

Abstract

Tourism is important in that protected areas (PAs) provide cultural ecosystem services. However, interactions between humans and nature, between stakeholders, and between environmental elements make it complex and variable. To promote sustainable tourism development in PAs, this study (i) established an evaluation framework reflecting the relationships among stakeholders and different environmental system dimensions considering human–environment systems’ complexities, dynamics, and interactivity, (ii) identified 52 sustainability indicators (31 belonging to the social system and 21 to the environmental system) in accordance with sustainable tourism development goals for PAs using the fuzzy Delphi method, and (iii) applied these indicators to Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve. The results indicated that its overall sustainability is intermediate, with the sustainability of its social system being better than that of the environmental system. We effectively combined the stakeholder theory and coupling coordination degree, and assessed the sustainability of PA tourism with the relational perspective.

Keywords

• Sustainability
• Tourism system
• Protected area
• Stakeholders
• Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve