DEVELOPING FINANCING MODELS FOR PUBLIC GOODS RELATED TO NATURE- BASED TOURISM AND OUTDOOR RECREATION

Abstract

Public goods enable people to live together as a community, provide common benefits, and support available activities such as tourism. However, these public goods require investment, construction, and maintenance. Cities and natural areas affected by tourism are increasingly under pressure, notably nature-based tourism or outdoor activities, which have seen a surge in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Higgins-Desbiolles describes tourism's problem as an addiction to growth, which is fundamentally incompatible with sustainability goals (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018).
Apart from tourism's negative impact on nature and protected areas, global warming imposes additional costs to compensate for or protect natural areas that hold great potential for both outdoor tourism and nature conservation itself, emphasizing the need to avoid an anthropocentric approach.
On the flip side, tourism activities also create revenue for national and local governments to fund some expenditures. In the age of austerity, governments and local governments are looking for ways to deal with the funding issue for public goods fairly (Comerford et al., 2010; Crawford et al., 2010; Ortiz & Cummins, 2013). That brings us to our problem: How can we finance public goods related to nature-based tourism and outdoor activities in a sustainable way?