Sustainable tourism as a factor in the development of protected areas in the Pomerania Euroregion

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the opinion of the inhabitants of protected areas in the Polish-German borderland on the development of tourism using the concept of sustainable tourism. It was examined whether the type of protected area and the country of residence were determinants of sustainable tourism development. In 2019-2020, a questionnaire survey was conducted among residents near 14 protected areas in the Pomerania Euroregion. Multinomial and ordinal logit models were used in the data analysis. The main limitations of the survey were the inability to refer to similar surveys from previous years and for other protected areas in Poland and Germany. This prevented a complete spatial-temporal analysis. The study carried out on the acceptance by inhabitants of the neighbourhood of protected areas in the Pomerania Euroregion is unique. The Polish protected regions of the Pomerania Euroregion were shown to have more significant potential for sustainable tourism development than the German ones. The results also show some differences in the perception of tourism by the Poles and the Germans.