Relevance of Impact Studies on the Environmental Impacts of Tourism and Sustainability

Abstract

The chapter investigates the relationship and trends in tourism-environmental impact studies in research communities for past 10 years. It discusses the various components and categories of the environmental impacts within context to the tourism. To achieve the purpose, a bibliometric study of the Scopus-indexed publications was conducted and analyzed for three themes using the Scopus search-defined parameters. During the search defining parameters, a total of 125, 28, and 88 relevant documents were obtained from the database for the theme, tourism-environmental impact overall studies, tourism-environmental impact and carrying capacity, socio-cultural and perception-based relevant studies, respectively. Based on the results, the authors conclude that there is a significant increase in environmental impact and tourism-related studies in the past 10 years. European countries have a major contribution towards environmental impact and tourism studies as compared to other Asian countries. The technical studies using tools of assessment for environmental impacts and tourism linkages is still insufficient.