Trail-related tourism and sustainable territorial development

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Publications

Sustainable recreational trail design from the recreational opportunity spectrum and trail user perception: a case study of the Seven Hanging Valleys

Publication . Pereira, Luis; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Lukoseviciute, Goda

Recreational trails represent corridors of benefits to human health and well-being, learning and education through an understanding of other cultures or countries, raising environmental awareness, local economic development, limiting the dispersion of the visitors, linking key attractions of a given area or diversifying tourism markets. However, trail development and design require to keep up sustainability principles and understand trail user perceptions. This paper aims to identify trail management priorities to improve sustainable design and visitor experience. The most popular hiking trail of Portugal located in the Algarve region was used as a study case to describe recreation opportunities of the trail’s management, development stage, preferred trail attributes and determinants of trail visitor loyalty. This study applied the recreation opportunity spectrum framework and the logistic regression model. Planners and managers might utilise these results to identify strategies for nature conservation and sustainable trail development, simultaneously maximising trail-related experiences among loyal trail users.

2021Journal article

Restricted

Recreational trail development within different geographical contexts as a determinant of income multiplier and local economic impact

Publication . Lukoseviciute, Goda; Pereira, Luis; Panagopoulos, Thomas; Fedeli, Giancarlo; Ramsey, Elaine; Madden, Kyle; Condell, Joan

The development of recreational trails has gained popularity in recent years and therefore many scholars have studied various aspects of them. However, the recreational trail theoretical framework lacks an understanding of the relationship between the stage of trail development and income multiplier value. This research aims to examine this relationship and thus advance the traditional theory of recreational trail economic impact by providing an explanation of the relationship between the stage of trail development and the income multiplier. This study applied a combined approach of Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) to assess the stage of trail development and the Ad hoc model to estimate the income multiplier and economic impact. The results of this study reveal that there is a strong correlation between the stage of trail development and income multiplier and provide a novelty in traditional recreational trail management and economic impact theory thus enriching the topical literature.

2023-03Journal article

Open Access