Search Results (3,299)

Urban marketplaces are increasingly recognised in European policy debates as multifunctional public spaces that extend beyond their traditional economic role. Across the European Union, emerging trends point to a shift towards market models that integrate social interaction, cultural activities, tourism, sustainable food production and place-based urban development, thereby contributing to more inclusive and liveable cities. However, the extent to which such transformations align with local actors’ perspectives and existing governance arrangements remains underexplored, particularly in Central European contexts. This paper evaluates the transformative potential of urban marketplaces as multifunctional public spaces from the perspective of key stakeholders in the City of Zagreb. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining a desk analysis of European policy and practice trends with empirical research conducted at the local level. Data were collected through surveys of marketplace users (citizens) and vendors (tenants), complemented by focus groups with other relevant local actors. This approach provides insights into everyday practices, perceived barriers, governance challenges, and future expectations related to marketplace development. The findings reveal a strong alignment between stakeholder perspectives and European policy trends promoting people-centred and multifunctional marketplaces, while also identifying tensions with existing management and governance frameworks. Citizens emphasise the cultural, social, and tourism value of marketplace interactions, whereas vendors and governance actors highlight infrastructure needs and the importance of more participatory governance arrangements. The paper argues that stakeholder-based evaluation of transformative potential is essential for advancing inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban regeneration through urban marketplaces. Full article

Lakes represent valuable natural resources with significant potential for sustainable tourism development. Their tourism valorization requires a comprehensive assessment framework that integrates environmental, infrastructural, socio-economic, and governance dimensions. This study applies the Fuzzy TOPSIS method to evaluate the sustainable tourism potential of ten selected lakes in Serbia. A multi-criteria framework was developed based on ten indicators, including water quality, tourism pressure and carrying capacity, biodiversity, environmental conservation, tourism infrastructure, accessibility, economic effects, and community involvement. Expert evaluations, supported by available evidence, were transformed into triangular fuzzy numbers in order to account for uncertainty and subjectivity in the assessment process. The Fuzzy TOPSIS model was used to calculate the relative closeness of each lake to the ideal solution for sustainable tourism valorization. The results reveal significant differences among the analyzed lakes. Lake Đerdap achieved the highest ranking (Ci = 0.818), followed by Lake Zaovine (Ci = 0.723), Lake Perućac (Ci = 0.644), and Lake Vlasina (Ci = 0.640), reflecting their favorable overall performance across the selected environmental, infrastructural, accessibility, and tourism-related criteria. Lower-ranked lakes were characterized by infrastructural limitations and less favorable performance in selected tourism-related criteria. The study illustrates the applicability of the Fuzzy TOPSIS approach for sustainable tourism evaluation and provides a practical framework for tourism planning, destination management, and policy-making aimed at supporting sustainable lake tourism development in Serbia. Full article

Amid rising global economic uncertainty and frequent external shocks, strengthening marine economic resilience has become a core priority for coastal nations to stabilize industrial supply chains and achieve sustainable marine development. China’s traditional resource-driven marine economy faces persistent structural bottlenecks, including homogeneous industrial structure, low value addition and weak risk resistance. As a landmark national policy for sustainable marine economic growth, the Marine Economic Innovation and Development Policy (MEIDP) has been piloted in 15 coastal cities across two batches, yet its causal impact on marine economic resilience remains under systematic evaluation. Using panel data of 51 Chinese coastal cities from 2008 to 2023, this study employs a multi-period difference-in-differences approach with supporting analyses to systematically evaluate the MEIDP’s impact on marine economic resilience, as well as its moderating mechanisms and heterogeneous patterns. The key findings are threefold. First, the MEIDP significantly improves coastal cities’ marine economic resilience, and this positive effect remains stable after multiple robustness tests. Second, public health emergencies exert a significant positive moderating effect, where the industrial support capacity and risk-resilience foundations established through policy implementation function more effectively under shock conditions, thereby amplifying the enhancement of resilience. Third, the policy effect shows prominent heterogeneity, being more pronounced in high-tourism cities and the Northern Marine Economic Circle, while statistically insignificant in low-tourism cities and the Southern Marine Economic Circle. This study enriches the theoretical framework of marine economic policy evaluation and provides empirical evidence from a major developing country for global marine governance, confirming that marine policies that promote innovation are an effective path to strengthen economic risk resistance. In light of these findings, we propose targeted policy recommendations to steadily enhance overall marine economic resilience. Coastal regions should deepen marine policies that promote innovation to bolster industrial upgrading and technological empowerment, adopt differentiated schemes aligned with local industrial foundations and resource endowments, promote marine industrial diversification and chain extension to reduce structural vulnerability, and improve public risk response mechanisms to strengthen the counter-cyclical buffering capacity of the marine economy. Full article

Rural tourism strategies in underdeveloped countries have gained popularity in recent years due to rural tourism’s significance in the sustainable development of society. Thus, by integrating affective event theory in the context of rural tourism, the present study underscores the formation of tourists’ loyalty to rural tourist destinations based on the perspectives of affective atmosphere and memorable tourism experience for rural tourist destinations. Drawing on 541 valid samples from tourists to Xidi and Hongcun, which are famous rural tourist destinations in China, both SEM and fsQCA were employed to capture the linear effects and configurational pathways leading to tourists’ loyalty to rural tourist destinations. The results indicate that conviviality, therapeutics, authenticity, and playfulness significantly enhance tourists’ memorable tourism experience, which subsequently strengthens their loyalty to rural tourist destinations. Complementing these findings, the fsQCA results reveal multiple equifinal and causally asymmetrical configurations associated with high loyalty. Through the combined use of symmetric and asymmetric approaches, this study offers a more holistic understanding of the formation of destination loyalty and provides theoretically grounded and practically meaningful insights for rural tourism development and strategic destination management. Full article

Understanding the determinants of economic growth remains a central issue for resource-dependent economies seeking to achieve sustainable development and economic diversification. In this context, Kazakhstan represents a particularly relevant case due to its heavy reliance on energy resources and its increasing emphasis on tourism development as a potential diversification strategy. This study investigates the validity of the tourism-led growth hypothesis and the energy-led growth hypothesis in Kazakhstan using annual data covering the period 1995–2024. Economic growth is modeled as a function of tourism revenues, energy consumption, inflation, and the real effective exchange rate. To examine both short-run and long-run relationships among the variables, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach is employed. In addition, structural breaks are identified using the Bai–Perron multiple breakpoint test and incorporated into the empirical framework. The empirical results reveal the existence of a long-run cointegration relationship among the variables. Long-run estimates indicate that energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth, providing support for the energy-led growth hypothesis. In contrast, tourism revenues do not exert a statistically significant impact on economic growth, suggesting that the tourism-led growth hypothesis is not supported in the case of Kazakhstan. The real effective exchange rate exhibits a negative long-run relationship with economic growth, while inflation does not appear to be a significant determinant. Short-run results are broadly consistent with the long-run findings and indicate a gradual adjustment toward equilibrium. Furthermore, diagnostic and stability tests indicate the adequacy, robustness, and stability of the estimated model. The findings suggest that Kazakhstan’s economic growth remains strongly associated with energy-related activities despite ongoing diversification efforts. While tourism may contribute to regional development and broader socioeconomic objectives, its contribution to macroeconomic growth appears to be limited relative to the dominant role of the energy sector. The study contributes to the literature by jointly evaluating the tourism-led growth and energy-led growth hypotheses within a unified framework and provides policy-relevant evidence regarding the challenges of economic diversification in resource-dependent economies. Full article

The socio-cultural sustainability of heritage tourism depends in part on how historical memories and cultural meanings are communicated, interpreted, and passed on over time. However, the family’s role as a key socialization agent in shaping tourists’ interpretations of nationally significant heritage remains underexplored. This study examines the relationships among family historical communication (FHC), tourists’ subjective interpretation of heritage, and behavioral intentions. Using the case of sustainable heritage tourism in Dandong, China, the study conceptualizes tourists’ subjective heritage interpretation in terms of three dimensions: educational experience (cognitive), historical identity (affective), and inheritance value (evaluative). The study contributes by treating family historical communication as a pre-trip interpretive context that shapes heritage meaning-making and by proposing a multidimensional framework linking prior social experiences, subjective interpretation, and behavioral intentions. Survey data from 611 heritage tourists were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypothesized relationships and age-cohort moderation effects. The results show that FHC is positively associated with all three meaning-making dimensions as well as with behavioral intentions. The mediation analysis further indicates that the indirect effects of FHC on behavioral intentions are stronger through historical identity and inheritance value than through educational experience. In addition, significant age-cohort moderation is found only in the relationship between FHC and educational experience. By highlighting the family as an important bridge between national narratives and personal meaning, this study offers implications for the tourism-supportive and socio-cultural dimensions of sustainable heritage management and inclusive destination governance. Full article

Sustainable tourism in oasis landscapes requires governance approaches that go beyond generic destination-growth models and standardized sustainability checklists. In living cultural landscapes such as Al-Ahsa Oasis, tourism development is inseparable from water systems, palm-grove agriculture, rural livelihoods, heritage values, climate stress, visitor behavior, and institutional accountability. This paper develops a governance framework for sustainable tourism in Al-Ahsa Oasis, Saudi Arabia, a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape. Methodologically, it is a conceptual framework-development study based on structured critical review and contextual synthesis. It critically interprets international sustainable tourism, heritage management, visitor management, and sustainable investment frameworks in relation to recent Al-Ahsa-specific evidence on rural tourism, resident satisfaction, farm-tourist behavior, rural lodges, land-cover change, and World Heritage governance. The study proposes a six-dimensional framework structured around cultural landscape stewardship, water-sensitive ecological governance, agricultural landscape continuity and rural accommodation regulation, community benefit and local enterprise, climate-responsive visitor management and interpretation, and monitoring and institutional accountability. These dimensions are treated as interdependent governance fields rather than separate checklist categories. The framework is further operationalized through an indicator and governance matrix linking suggested indicators, data sources, governance mechanisms, and responsible actors. The paper contributes by reframing sustainable oasis tourism as an adaptive governance problem rather than a technical exercise in applying predefined criteria. It provides an evidence-informed basis for planning, monitoring, stakeholder deliberation, policy refinement, and future empirical testing in Al-Ahsa and comparable arid cultural landscapes. Full article

Agritourism has emerged as an increasingly important strategy for rural diversification and multifunctional agricultural development, particularly in transition economies characterized by fragmented farm structures, limited rural investment capacity, and growing tourism demand. Despite the expansion of agricultural support schemes aimed at promoting rural diversification, empirical evidence on their effectiveness in supporting agritourism development at the farm level remains limited, especially in Southeast European contexts. Against this background, the study addresses the following research question: To what extent have agricultural support schemes contributed to agritourism development, rural diversification, and rural resilience in Albania, and what factors constrain their long-term effectiveness? To answer this question, the study examines the role of agricultural support schemes in shaping agritourism development in Albania, with particular emphasis on farm diversification, rural resilience, and implementation constraints. The study adopts a mixed-methods case study approach, combining secondary policy and statistical analysis with primary field research. The fieldwork involved 60 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with agritourism farm owners across the regions of Korçë, Berat, Vlorë, Shkodër, and Lezhë, conducted during September–October 2025. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to assess investment patterns, perceived socio-economic impacts, and institutional barriers associated with agricultural support schemes. The results show that agricultural support schemes primarily function as catalysts for investment and diversification rather than stand-alone drivers of sustainable rural transformation. However, persistent structural constraints were identified, including administrative complexity, limited marketing capacity, infrastructure deficiencies, and a strong dependence on seasonal tourism demand. These factors reduce the long-term sustainability and scalability of agritourism enterprises. The paper contributes to the literature on agritourism and rural development by providing empirical evidence from the context of a transition economy and demonstrating that financial support alone is insufficient to ensure sustainable rural transformation. Full article

Mountain tourism destinations are increasingly challenged by climate change, environmental degradation, and the need to balance economic development with the long-term conservation of natural resources. This study evaluates alternative pathways for the sustainable development of mountain tourism in Central Serbia by applying an integrated multi-criteria decision-making framework that combines conventional and fuzzy approaches to account for uncertainty in expert judgments. A set of economic, environmental, social, developmental, and governance-related criteria was used to assess different tourism development models and identify those with the greatest potential to support long-term sustainability. The findings indicate that development strategies emphasizing climate adaptation, environmental protection, tourism diversification, and active participation of local communities provide the most promising basis for sustainable mountain tourism development. The study also highlights the importance of diversifying tourism products beyond winter-based activities through nature-based forms of tourism, including geotourism, which builds upon the region’s rich geoheritage, geomorphological diversity, and cultural landscapes while strengthening destination resilience to climate change. The proposed evaluation framework provides a practical decision-support tool that can be adapted to other mountain regions facing similar environmental and developmental challenges. Full article

Community-based heritage tourism plays an important role in promoting sustainable development while preserving cultural heritage in indigenous and traditional communities. However, limited empirical evidence exists regarding its contribution to sustainable development within Mongolia’s nomadic communities. Grounded in Social Exchange Theory (SET), this study examines the relationships among Community Participation, Heritage Interpretation, Tourism Management, Cultural Identity Preservation, and Sustainable Development. Data were collected from 250 international tourists who participated in community-based heritage tourism experiences in Mongolia and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that Heritage Interpretation and Tourism Management positively influence Cultural Identity Preservation, while Community Participation, Tourism Management, and Cultural Identity Preservation significantly enhance Sustainable Development. Community Participation, however, does not significantly influence Cultural Identity Preservation. Furthermore, Cultural Identity Preservation partially mediates the relationship between Tourism Management and Sustainable Development. These findings highlight the importance of effective tourism management and meaningful heritage interpretation in strengthening cultural preservation and promoting sustainable development. The study extends the application of Social Exchange Theory in the context of community-based heritage tourism and provides practical implications for policymakers and destination managers seeking to balance cultural heritage conservation with sustainable tourism development. Full article

Accurate daily tourist flow prediction is crucial for optimizing tourism management, allocating public resources, and ensuring sustainable ecological development in scenic areas. However, forecasting visitor volume at the Jiuzhaigou Scenic Area poses significant challenges for conventional deep learning architectures due to the data’s high volatility, strong seasonality, and complex non-stationarity. To address these limitations, this study proposes a novel integrated forecasting framework, SD-ConvLSTM-Attn (Seasonal Trend Decomposition-Enhanced Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory with Attention). Using daily visitor data spanning 30 March 2015 to 10 April 2026, collected from the official website of the Jiuzhaigou Scenic Area on 11 April 2026, the model employs a “divide-and-conquer” strategy. A Seasonal Trend decomposition layer first decouples the non-stationary raw sequence into a deterministic trend and stochastic seasonal components. Subsequently, a ConvLSTM module is utilized to extract local features, while a Multi-Head Attention mechanism is integrated to capture long-range temporal dependencies, including recurring Golden Week demand spikes. The experimental results demonstrate that the SD-ConvLSTM-Attn architecture achieves competitive predictive performance against six benchmark architectures, including LSTM, CNN-LSTM, ConvLSTM, TimeMixer, DLinear, and PatchTST, exhibiting superior accuracy in peak flow capture. Furthermore, a hierarchical capacity warning system and predictive resource scheduling protocol are proposed to support dynamic scenic area management. Full article

The study examines relationships linking AI literacy, halal literacy, information quality, destination inclusivity, perceived value, destination preference, and visit intention in Muslim tourists’ evaluations of Tana Toraja, a culturally distinctive non-Muslim heritage destination. Owing to the predominance of respondents without prior experience visiting Tana Toraja, the findings primarily concern anticipated perceptions and prospective visit intentions, not actual post-visit evaluations. The study contributes to tourism scholarship through a unified empirical framework connecting established constructs from AI-driven tourism, halal tourism, and inclusive heritage tourism. Data from 371 respondents were collected through an online survey and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results show that AI literacy significantly affects information quality and halal literacy, suggesting that digitally literate tourists are better positioned to filter and verify AI-mediated travel information. Halal literacy positively affects destination inclusivity and perceived value, while information quality enhances inclusivity, preference, and visit intention. Perceived value also strengthens inclusivity and preference, and destination preference strongly predicts visit intention. Overall, the findings suggest that trustworthy AI-mediated information, practical halal understanding, and perceived inclusivity may help reduce uncertainty among Muslim prospective tourists considering culturally distinctive heritage destinations. Full article

Agritourism is increasingly intersecting with digital technologies to foster rural resilience, economic growth, and sustainable development. This study conducts a comprehensive systematic bibliometric review to map the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and collaborative networks characterizing the digitalization of agritourism from 2010 to 2025. Guided by the PRISMA framework, data from the Scopus database were analyzed using scientific mapping techniques, including keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution tracking, and spatial collaboration analysis. The findings reveal a paradigm shift categorized into three evolutionary phases: an incubation period of basic web adoption (2011–2017), a disruptive phase catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic (2018–2022), and an exponential maturation phase driven by Industry 4.0 technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Virtual Reality (2023–2025). Four primary thematic clusters emerged: digital marketing and connectivity, smart tourism and advanced analytics, immersive technologies for heritage preservation, and macro-level sustainability policies. Geopolitically, research is driven by two distinct networks: an Asian-centric hub led by China focusing on state-sponsored smart villages, and a Western hub anchored by the USA and Italy emphasizing entrepreneurial diversification. The study concludes that digitalization has transitioned from a reactive survival mechanism to a proactive strategic necessity. It highlights the critical need to bridge the digital divide through human capital investment and provides a future research agenda focusing on the ethical application of AI, the circular economy, and the preservation of rural authenticity in emerging ’phygital’ environments. Full article

Community-based tourism enterprises (CBTEs) play an important role in supporting local livelihoods, preserving cultural heritage, and promoting sustainable tourism development. This study examines the relationships among supply chain integration, resilience capabilities, and sustainable development using survey data from 256 community-based tourism enterprises in Vietnam. A two-stage empirical approach combining Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models was employed. The findings indicate that network design and information systems positively influence both proactive and reactive resilience capabilities, while collaboration strengthens proactive resilience but negatively affects reactive resilience. Strategy exerts the strongest positive effect on reactive resilience. Furthermore, both proactive and reactive resilience capabilities positively contribute to environmental, social, and economic sustainability outcomes. Reactive resilience demonstrates the strongest impact on environmental sustainability, whereas proactive resilience has the greatest effect on economic sustainability. An unexpected finding is the negative relationship between collaboration and reactive resilience, suggesting potential trade-offs between stakeholder dependence and organizational flexibility. This study extends Dynamic Capability Theory by distinguishing between proactive and reactive resilience capabilities and explaining how resilience facilitates the transformation of supply chain integration into sustainable development outcomes. The findings have practical implications for strengthening resilience and promoting sustainability in community-based tourism enterprises. Full article

As one of the key vehicles to integrating culture and tourism in urban and rural development, cultural tourism-oriented characteristic towns are increasingly facing natural and social disaster risks caused by global climate variability, large-scale expansion of town areas, and intensified human engineering activities. In particular, characteristic towns that have rapidly developed through tourism based on historical and cultural heritage face challenges such as compact layouts of ancient architectural complexes, extensive outward expansion of newly developed areas, and inadequately planned emergency evacuation systems—making them ill-equipped to cope with increasingly uncertain disaster risks. In response to these issues, this study takes Zhangguying Town in Yueyang County, Hunan Province, as a case study. Through field investigations, interviews, and GIS-based hydrological simulations, the research systematically identifies the characteristics and influencing factors of disaster risks in the town. It also reveals the core dilemmas confronting current disaster prevention planning and proposes strategies such as enhancing chain disaster prevention measures, promoting micro-scale, site-specific disaster prevention retrofitting, and establishing a multi-scale disaster prevention system through “point-line” linkages. By reducing disaster risks, preserving cultural heritage, and optimizing emergency response capacities, this research effectively supports the sustainable development of cultural tourism-oriented characteristic towns from a disaster prevention perspective, enabling these towns to withstand natural hazards while sustaining their historical, cultural, and socio-economic functions. The findings provide a theoretical basis and methodological reference for comprehensive disaster prevention planning in similar cultural tourism-oriented characteristic towns. Full article