Open AccessMeasuring environmental and landscape-related potential for tourism development in rural areas and assessment of its co-occurrence with tourist movement: The case of Poland
Author(s) -
Marcin Mazur,
Maria Bednarek-Szczepańska,
Jerzy Bański,
Damian Mazurek
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
moravian geographical reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.601
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 2199-6202
pISSN - 1210-8812
DOI - 10.2478/mgr-2021-0009
Subject(s) - tourism , geography , environmental resource management , index (typography) , landscape assessment , regional science , rural tourism , quality (philosophy) , natural (archaeology) , environmental planning , tourism geography , computer science , environmental science , landscape design , philosophy , archaeology , epistemology , world wide web
The assessment of assets regarding their potential for tourism development is a well-recognised aspect of quantitative geographic research. This paper confines such matters to environmental and landscape-related attributes. The methodological objective is to propose a synthetic index for holistic measurement of a complex system of assets at the local level for Poland’s rural areas, followed by its empirical verification. The natural and landscape-related potential of a given area is perceived broadly, as the aspects involved are diverse and complementary: the quality of the landscape, the value of the environment, forest cover, relief, accessibility to surface waters and local bioclimate. The cognitive advantage of this research project is attained by confronting this index against a measure of tourist movement, as well as classifying rural areas by means of combining both dimensions. A considerable number of communes in Poland are characterised by relatively high potential, albeit they are not being exploited for tourism development to a correspondingly large degree.