Abstract
Geographic Information System (GIS) can be used in ecotourism as a decision support tool for sustainable tourism planning, impact assessment, visitor flow management, and tourism site selection. Therefore, this system has the potential to be widely applied in tourism. The purpose of the study was to explore the potential for ecotourism development using GIS in Sepidan region, placed in the southwestern part of Iran. An innovative method was proposed for adjusting effective parameters in evaluation of ecotourism. The methods used for evaluation comprised Boolean, current multi-criteria evaluation methods (weighted linear combination), and the proposed methods of geometric mean and its calibration. Results showed that an improved method using geometric mean (kappa= 0.72) was better than Boolean (kappa= 0.56) and multi-criteria evaluation (kappa= 0.59) models. The calibrated geometric mean was also the best among the different models used. It should be noted that the geometric mean method was simpler than multi-criteria evaluation and did not require the weighting process.
Highlights
For a sustainable development of a region, it is important to consider the interest of its local population
Ecotourism has to be developed in a planned approach where Geographical Information System (GIS) and spatial decision-making tools can act as decision support systems
The present study aimed to provide a planning method for evaluating ecotourism suitability
Summary
For a sustainable development of a region, it is important to consider the interest of its local population. In terms of ecotourism development, researchers have recently begun to examine the role of local residents in ecotourism activities. Due to the development of alternative forms of ecotourism, these activities have attracted the interest of governments, communities, and researchers. Environmental conservation plays an important role in ecotourism development. Ecotourism has to be developed in a planned approach where Geographical Information System (GIS) and spatial decision-making tools can act as decision support systems. Spatial decisionmaking tools can be considered as a good framework for land suitability across a landscape via the actual data, criterion outcomes, and preferences and decisions of various stakeholders and. Multicriteria evaluation (MCE) methods can assess decision-making alternatives for future land-use planning (Malczewski and Rinner, 2015)
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