Environmental Impact And Business Management In Rural Tourism

Abstract

The growth in rural tourism and the importance of the environment to its sustainability have given rise to a growing interest in analyzing the impact of tourist activity and in studying how the environmental resource fits into business management in the industry. But the economic characteristics of rural tourism businesses and the diversity and complexity of their environmental impacts have made it difficult for a generally accepted framework for such analyses to emerge. There is wider agreement on the key role played by entrepreneurs’ environmental awareness in the adoption of eco-friendly management practice. In this context, and within the Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha, this paper undertakes a questionnaire-based study of the environmental awareness of entrepreneurs in rural tourism using the partial least squares (PLS) method to estimate its latent dimensions and the environmental impacts perceived.