Rural Sustainability: Touristic Consumption and Local Development

Dear Colleagues,

Tourism in rural territories has become a strategic driver for sustainable development, especially when it is anchored in local culture and ancestral knowledge. Rural sustainability depends on balancing economic growth with the protection of natural resources, community well-being, and the preservation of identity. Touristic consumption plays a central role, as visitors increasingly seek authentic experiences connected to traditional practices, gastronomy, rituals, and local livelihoods. When communities manage tourism responsibly, it strengthens local economies, encourages entrepreneurship, and generates new employment opportunities while supporting social cohesion.

At the same time, integrating ancestral knowledge into tourism fosters cultural revitalization and safeguards intangible heritage. This knowledge shapes sustainable production systems, agroecological practices, crafts, and rituals that enrich the tourist experience. Local development is reinforced when participatory governance models ensure fair benefit distribution, empower communities to lead decision-making, and promote environmentally responsible activities. Overall, rural tourism grounded in cultural and ancestral knowledge becomes a tool for sustainable territorial development, enhancing resilience and preserving heritage for future generations.

Scope and Purpose of the Special Issue, and Its Contribution to Existing Literature

1. Overall Focus, Scope, and Purpose of the Special Issue

1. Focus

This Special Issue focuses on the intersections between rural sustainability, touristic consumption, and local development, with particular emphasis on cultural and ancestral knowledge as catalysts for sustainable territorial transformation. This Special Issue aims to explore how tourism practices grounded in heritage, identity, and community participation can foster resilient rural economies while protecting natural ecosystems and strengthening socio-cultural continuity.

The scope encompasses interdisciplinary and multi-scalar analyses of rural territories, including case studies, theoretical contributions, methodological innovations, and policy-driven research. Topics include sustainable tourism models, community-led development, the integration of ancestral and indigenous knowledge into economic activities, responsible resource management, agroecology, circular economies, and the evaluation and monitoring of sustainability outcomes. Contributions may adopt qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods approaches, and they should demonstrate clear implications for socio-economic, environmental, and cultural sustainability.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to provide an integrated academic platform that advances understanding of how rural communities can leverage tourism and local knowledge systems to achieve sustainable development. Beyond describing opportunities, this Special Issue seeks to identify structural challenges, governance demands, and long-term strategies that ensure equitable benefit distribution, environmental stewardship, and cultural preservation. Ultimately, this Special Issue aims to offer evidence-based insights that inform sustainable policies, community planning, and international debates on rural resilience.

2. Relationship to and Supplementation of Existing Literature

The existing literature on sustainability and tourism extensively discusses rural development, heritage preservation, and community-based tourism. However, there remain gaps in integrating these themes into a unified framework that explicitly links touristic consumption, ancestral knowledge systems, and measurable sustainability outcomes. This Special Issue supplements the literature through the following methods:

• Bridging sustainability science with cultural and indigenous studies to highlight how ancestral knowledge acts as both a development resource and a conservation strategy.
• Providing comparative analyses across regions and contexts, offering new theoretical and empirical insights into the dynamics of rural tourism in the Global South and beyond.
• Extending discussions on socio-ecological resilience by emphasizing governance, policy mechanisms, and sustainability metrics tailored to rural realities.
• Bringing forward innovative methodologies for monitoring, measuring, and evaluating sustainability in tourism-related rural development, directly aligning with the Journal’s interest in sustainability assessment, tools, and indicators.

3. Contribution to the Journal’s Aims and Scope

This Special Issue directly aligns with Sustainability’s mission by addressing the following:

• Sustainability challenges faced by rural territories confronting globalization, tourism pressures, and environmental degradation.
• Scientific and socio-economic approaches to strengthening local development through heritage-based tourism.
• Quantification and monitoring of sustainability, including tools, frameworks, and indicators that assess rural resilience, environmental impacts, and community well-being.
• Integrated sustainable development, combining ecological conservation, cultural revitalization, economic diversification, and participatory governance.
• Policy and legal dimensions, such as territorial planning, cultural protection frameworks, and indigenous rights related to land and knowledge.

Dr. Pablo Quezada-Sarmiento
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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