Frontiers in Nature-based Tourism

Nature has been a key attraction factor for tourism in the Nordic countries for decades. The demand for nature-based tourism has steadily grown and is one of the most rapidly expanding sectors within tourism across Europe and elsewhere. This demand has created opportunities for nature-based tourism to develop as an economic diversification tool within regions rich in natural amenities. But nature-based tourism is not only about tourism businesses and tourists visiting nature. The natural environment as a basis for tourism involves many challenges related to local communities, public access, nature protection and the management of natural resources.

This book covers a broad set of topics in contemporary nature-based tourism from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Areas discussed are innovation, fishing rights and supply of angling, recreation experience preferences, national park attractions, the cultural clash between established outdoor recreational use and new tourism activities, the Right of Public Access as opportunity and obstacle, preferences of tourism landscapes, controversies around wilderness development, management of hiking trails, eco-tourism certification, and financing of recreational infrastructure.

This book was published as a special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.

Peter Fredman is a Professor in nature-based tourism at the European Tourism Research Institute (ETOUR) and Mid-Sweden University, Campus Ostersund. His main research interests are studies of outdoor recreation demand, visitor monitoring, planning, economic analyses and studies of the nature-based tourism supply.

Liisa Tyrvainen is a Professor in nature-based tourism at the Finnish Forest Research Institute (METLA) and University of Lapland. Her main research interests are nature-based tourism demand, landscape research, participatory land-use and natural resource planning and economic analysis of landscape and recreation values of nature.