Tourism in Protected Areas : A Study of National Parks as Arenas for Sustainable Nature-Based Tourism

Abstract: Nature-based tourism (NBT) can be explained as a form of tourism that takes place in some kind of natural area outside one's home. NBT has been one of the fastest-growing forms of tourism worldwide and is believed to continue to grow in the future as well. With the rising interest in visiting natural areas, many national parks and other protected areas have seen an increase in visitors, making them popular NBT destinations. Protected areas are covered by various conservation policies, and in a time of biodiversity loss, they are increasingly being recognised as a foundation of sustainable biodiversity resources and as a cornerstone for sustainable development. However, protected areas are often impacted by touristic presence, so with both the growing importance of nature conservation and increasing visitation numbers, questions about how to manage tourism impacts in protected areas are ever more central. To investigate this, the national parks in Sweden were chosen as the empirical field of this thesis. By adapting a mixed-method approach using a survey and interviews as data-collecting methods, this thesis set out to explore how the managers of the national parks in Sweden work with NBT and nature conservation in times with changing circumstances. Amongst other things, the thesis shows that a majority of the national parks in Sweden had experienced an increase in visitors in the last five years, and that the national parks can be seen as arenas for where NBT can take place. The interest in visiting a national park in Sweden was believed to continue being strong, and lack of funding was identified as the biggest challenge that the national parks are facing right now. Building on this, the thesis discussed that the national parks need more funding to better handle both nature conservation and touristic activities, which was also a main conclusion of the thesis. Another conclusion drawn from this study is that the parks would benefit from better visitor statistics and surveys, and protected areas in Sweden would benefit from a system where the economic effects of nature tourism in protected nature are shown. The thesis contributes with theoretical knowledge of how managers of protected areas work and prioritise in times of changing circumstances.