Use Of Sustainable Tourism Indicators For Rural Coastal Communities: A Review

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of consolidation the sustainable tourism indicators have when applied to Coastal Rural Communities (CRC), with the aim of identifying these indicator's roles and the basic elements that each indicator most fulfills, in order to monitor and control the CRC. The conceptual and methodological frameworks were identified from the global and local perspectives, asking the question: How and who are developing sustainable coastal rural communities within the CRC? Pursuit of scientific information about the topic was carried out throughout four digital repositories: the Wiley online library (17 articles), the Web of Science (6 articles), academic Google (29 articles), and Scopus (20 articles). In total, we recognized 72 articles according to their title parameters and keywords. Out of all the studies, only 15% focus on our definition, studying the sustainable indicators in coastal areas, but acknowledge 580 indicators that are grouped into the three basic components of sustainability: those that are economical, socio-cultural or environmental. The databases used indicate that there is little literature on topics related to Sustainable Tourism Indicators (STI) in CRC. Finally, the criteria and codes we established for the analysis of the articles allow us to have a clear overview about the process of design, application and evaluation of STI in CRC. It is understood that indicators can be applied in different territorial contexts; however, it is necessary to have a specific foundation, so that the indicators can be compared in dissimilar stages.