Environmental Performance Reporting for Natural Area Tourism: Contributions by Visitor Impact Management Frameworks and Their Indicators

Abstract

Environmental performance reporting is being increasingly demanded of many sectors of society, including those responsible for managing natural area tourism. Recent approaches include corporate reporting, state-of-the-environment reporting, and environmental management systems. This paper evaluates the usefulness of visitor impact management frameworks and associated resource and social indicators, both of which have a rich history of application to wilderness and backcountry management, for performance reporting on natural area tourism management. The evaluation draws on a recently developed evaluation framework for protected area management, plus detailed criteria, to address today's environmental performance reporting needs. Against these criteria, the visitor impact management frameworks rated well, with the Limits of Acceptable Change rating the highest. Resource and social indicators also showed great potential for performance reporting provided they are meaningful to senior managers, politicians and other stakeholders. Integrating these frameworks and their resource and social indicators into today's performance reporting, especially into state-of-the-environment reporting and environmental management systems, could significantly advance meaningful performance reporting for natural area tourism management.