Abstract
This Special Issue addresses the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism provide essential benefits to individuals, communities, and society and thereby contribute to sustainability. Equitable provision of opportunities, cultural variations in desired experiences, barriers to outdoor recreation, and diverse perceptions of both nature and recreation add to the complexity in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism service delivery. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism occur within a socioecological system with feedback loops to changing social, economic, technological, and ecological conditions. On a global scale, climate change and other disturbance factors are impacting ecosystems and opportunities, increasing the importance of adaptation strategies for longer-term planning. Population growth and regional shifts in demographics and distribution (e.g., urbanization), as well as socioeconomic trends, affect who engages in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism, opportunities sought, nature access, and governance of outdoor services. Overall the complexity of sustainable outdoor recreation and tourism may suggest a need for different approaches to service delivery, culture change among service providers and managers of natural spaces, and novel approaches to inclusive governance and shared stewardship. Given the clear importance of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism to society, we invite you to consider this initial introduction to our assembled collection, which is meant to advance our understanding of the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability.
Highlights
There is growing recognition of the positive benefits of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism
Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism occur within a socioecological system with feedback loops to changing social, economic, technological, and ecological conditions [51,52,53]
Where overall outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism may increase [71] under climate change effects, opportunities in some geographic locations may shift in terms of activity type or predominant season of use [65]
Summary
There is growing recognition of the positive benefits of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism. Visiting natural settings and being outdoors are widely recognized as important for improving human health and well-being, enhancing social connections, connecting people with their natural and cultural heritage, generating revenues for use in conservation, contributing to local economies, fostering local or indigenous identity, and developing a conservation consciousness [1,2,3]. These identified benefits of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism exemplify the contributions of nature-based experiences to individual, community, and societal resilience and sustainability. The purpose of this volume is to explore the components of sustainable tourism and outdoor recreation and to critically evaluate these relationships in order to foster the effective management of parks and protected areas, as well as to enhance their contributions to broader socioecological resilience
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