Assessing social carrying capacity of tourists in protected natural areas

Abstract

Knowing the limits of the social carrying capacity of tourism is a fundamental component of sustainable destination management, especially in protected natural areas, which implies understanding the characteristics of demand and travel. The research presented in this paper was conducted in a natural destination, the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas National Park (Spain), identifying two segments of tourists by means of cluster analysis according to a set of sociodemographic and socioeconomic variables, as well as their willingness to pay to improve the sustainability of destinations. Subsequently, each cluster was related to the variables of the social carrying capacity of tourism, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was applied. The results indicate that there is a relationship between the clusters identified and their social carrying capacity, which would be very useful to policy makers, managers, and business owners in protected natural areas, in terms of designing of pro-sustainability strategies.