The conservation and tourism development of World Natural Heritage sites: The current situation and future prospects of research

• Published in: Journal for nature conservation Vol. 72; p. 126347
• Main Authors: Fei, Guangyu, Xiong, Kangning, Fei, Guanghui, Zhang, Haipeng, Zhang, Shirong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier GmbH 01.04.2023
• Subjects: Conservation; Core area; Literature review; Tourism; World Natural Heritage; SES; UNESCO; World Natural Heritage; Conservation; Literature review; GS; Tourism; WNH; LOT; WH; OUV; 3D; Core area; CBT; theWorld Heritage Convention; IUCN; SLR; WoS; MH
• ISSN: 1617-1381; 1618-1093
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jnc.2023.126347

The conservation and tourism development of World Heritage (WH) sites has always been a key and urgent scientific issue to be solved urgently by academia and industry all over the world. An increasing number of researchers and practitioners are paying attention to this issue. However, there is a lack of a comprehensive literature review on this topic. To fill this gap, this study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) based on 179 related studies retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar (GS) databases. Focusing on the research question of the conservation and tourism development of World Natural Heritage (WNH) sites, we built an SLR framework to implement the review process. First, quantitative research was conducted to analyse the annual numbers, content and continents of the published literature. Second, we classified and summarized the main progress and achievements from theoretical research, technical methods, model construction, monitoring and evaluating, and application demonstration. Finally, in view of the current research situation of the conservation and tourism development of WNH sites, we proposed eight key scientific issues to be solved and several directions for future research.