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Author(s): V. Castellani, S. Sala & D. Pitea
Abstract:
Tourism activities can generate both positive and negative effects on the
conditions of the areas where visiting and fruition activities take place; every
form of human use of natural environment causes changes to the environment
conditions.
Evaluation of carrying capacity of a destination has as a purpose the
measurement of the threshold over which alteration due to human activities
becomes unacceptable.
To evaluate the consequences of tourism activities
impacts it is necessary to know the characteristics of the environment where they
occur and especially its resilience, which is the measure of the disturbance that
the natural environment can tolerate without altering its equilibrium state.
The
carrying capacity concept is linked with resilience and rises from the necessity of
measure which is the maximum acceptable level of impact for the environment
or for one of its components and the capability of recovery of the previous
condition.
The purpose of this study is to suggest a model for assessing the
physical carrying capacity of tourism destinations, as a tool to evaluate whether
the current situation is sustainable or not and to determine if a rise in visitor
numbers could affect the quality of the environment, the resources available and
the quality of public services.
For the assessment, all environmental aspects are
separately analysed and the main environmental issues related to the daily life of
residents and to tourism activities (air quality, water quality and disposability,
waste management, soil use) are considered.
The methodology is based on an
evaluative procedure inspired by the DPSIR model, useful for underlining which
are the drivers of impacts and which is the most relevant dataset to describe
current and future scenarios.
The innovative aspect of this study is the integration
of the physical carrying capacity assessment with the evaluation of the managing
capacity of environmental and public services, which can lead to depletion of
ecosystem quality.
Keywords:
tourism, carrying capacity, destination management, DPSIR model.
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Pages: 10
Size: 367 kb
Paper DOI: 10.2495/ECO070341
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