Rainforest tourism: a systematic review of established knowledge and gaps in research

ABSTRACT

Rainforests provide exceptional spaces for nature-based tourism activities attracting large numbers of visitors. Simultaneously, tourism activities may create environmental, social and economic impacts that require management in order to conserve sensitive rainforest environments. Rainforest tourism constitutes a travel sector that receives growing interest worldwide. This study presents a timely review of current knowledge and research gaps in a new conceptual model to give recommendations for a future research agenda. Through a systematic quantitative review, the study identified 48 peer-reviewed journal articles addressing conservation and management topics (33), followed by visitor-related research (23), impacts (10), and finally community and stakeholder research (3) of rainforest tourism, published between 1975 and 2019. The majority of research focused on management issues relating to policy development, planning, education and conservation measures. A strong geographic bias was noted with very limited research available for rainforest regions in Africa and Asia. Future research should be concerned with expanding and linking rainforest research across countries, and filling knowledge gaps around visitor monitoring, specific impacts and causes, and the complexity of community and stakeholder involvement in managing impacts. Protocols may need to be established to facilitate the design and delivery of standardised research approaches across the globe.

KEYWORDS:

• Rainforest tourism
• nature-based tourism
• protected areas
• systematic review
• tropical rainforest
• temperate rainforest
• ecotourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daminda Sumanapala

Daminda Sumanapala (PhD) is research fellow at the school of veterinary and life science of Murdoch University, Western Australia. His research interests include nature-based tourism and protected area, motivation, attitudes, knowledge expectation and experiences of nature-based tourism and protected areas. He is particularly interested in understanding the challenges of nature-based tourism practice with human engagement and how it is mitigated and conserved for the future nature-based tourism industry in South and South-east Asia.

Isabelle D. Wolf

Isabelle D. Wolf is an urban green space and protected areas specialist. Isabelle researches various aspects of socio-ecological systems with a particular focus on tourism and recreation, health and wellbeing, and geospatial methods for people monitoring.