The Impact of Nautical Activities on the Environment—A Systematic Review of Research

Helena Ukić Boljat,Merica Slišković,Neven Grubišić

doi:10.3390/su131910552

Helena Ukić Boljat, Merica Slišković + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910552

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Sep 23, 2021
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Split, University of Rijeka

Abstract

As nautical tourism and recreational activities involving boats have become highly popular, research interest on various effects of nautical tourism is also increasing. This paper aims to analyze the main scientific contributions in the field of nautical tourism and its impact on the environment. The focus of the analysis is on the methods used to estimate and model recreational boating activities. Since nautical tourism plays a crucial role in the context of the growth and development of the economy, it is necessary to consider the environmental component of its development. The background objective of the paper is to provide a representation of environmental descriptors, i.e., to highlight in particular the environmental impact of nautical tourism. A search on the Web of Science Core Collection, touching on this topic, is composed of scientific papers published in the period 2010–2021. The papers examined are divided into five categories according to the impact of nautical tourism they study: Environmental, Economic, Social, Technical or Other. The results show that most papers were published in the area of environmental impacts of nautical tourism, with most papers examining invasive species, antifouling and impacts on species. The analysis showed that the negative impacts were mainly studied individually. Based on the analysis and evaluation of the scientific publications, a basic recommendation is given for the construction of a model to estimate recreational boating activities and its impact on the environment.

Highlights

Tourism, and recreational boating, implies the movement of people through time and space
It is clear that the number of studies which deal with modelling of recreational boating is still poor
We examined the Web of Science categories in which the papers are mainly published into the following categories: Environmental Sciences, Ecology, Marine Freshwater Biology, Oceanography, Water Resources, Geosciences Multidisciplinary, Biodiversity Conservation, Hospitality

Summary

Introduction

Recreational boating, implies the movement of people through time and space. Tourism plays a crucial role in the growth and development of the national (world) economy, and as such it must follow the guiding principle of sustainable development. [1] Gathering knowledge about the fundamentals and impacts of tourism is the first step towards achieving the goals. The basic characteristics of tourism are certainly spatial factors, but the fact is that very little research has been conducted to study and model spatial behavior. [5] To date, three methods have been used to collect spatial data in the tourism/recreation sector: direct observation, tracking people using devices (e.g., mobile phones) and recording spatial movements by completing questionnaires. The direct observation method includes four key steps “identify, track, observe, map”. [6] The

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