The concept of green tourism has evolved over time and is presently used with different meanings. The original one, spread during the 1980s, stands for small-scale tourism which involves visiting natural areas while minimizing environmental impacts. In this line, green tourism has been used interchangeably with such concepts as ecotourism, nature tourism, and rural tourism (Sung-kwon et al. 2003). Businesses have generally adopted a broader meaning for green tourism: any tourism activity operating in an environmentally friendly manner.
Recently, international organizations have defined the notion in line with the concept of sustainable tourism, which also considers other dimensions than environmental protection. In fact, for the World Tourism Organization, green tourism consists of “tourism activities that can be maintained, or sustained, indefinitely in their social, economic, cultural and environmental contexts” (UNWTO 2012: 1). For the United Nations Environment Programme, green...
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Dolnicar, S. 2010 Identifying Tourists with Smaller Environmental Footprints. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 18:717-734.
Sung-kwon, H., K. Jae-hyun, and K. Seong-il 2003 Implications of Potential Green Tourism Development. Annals of Tourism Research 30:323-341.
UNEP 2011 Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication. Geneva: United Nations Environment Programme.
UNWTO 2012 Tourism in the Green Economy: Background Report. Madrid: World Tourism Organization.
Valle, P., P. Pintassilgo, A. Matias, and F. André 2012 Tourist Attitudes towards an Accommodation Tax Earmarked for Environmental Protection: A Survey in the Algarve. Tourism Management 33:1408-1416.
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Pintassilgo, P. (2016). Green tourism. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01384-8_264
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