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Evaluating the issue of sustainable tourism with a system dynamic approach: evidence from Uttarakhand, India

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Abstract

Sustainable tourism is a dynamic, complex system in which continuous interaction between economic, social, and environmental components will take place. The complexity of the system occurs because of nonlinear interactions between these components. Further, in a dynamic condition, econometric models based on historical data will not provide a realistic solution. However, the plan towards achieving tourism sustainability is mostly based on the past behaviour of heterogeneous factors and assumes that these factors will behave in the same way in the future as well. This approach is inefficient for understanding the underlying structure of the complex system and fails to address the issue of sustainability in a feasible way. Therefore, the present study addresses the issue of sustainable tourism using a system dynamic approach for Mussoorie, India. The results of the study reveal that the existing tourism policy is more in favour of enhancement of tourism at the cost of degrading air quality through increase in carbon emissions, loss of water spring bodies, increase in noise pollution, over exploitation of natural resources and reflecting the myopic approach of the existing policy. This study confirms that the existing approach will emasculate the objective of sustainable tourism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Transportation Cluster, School of Business, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, Uttrakhand, 248007, India

    Atul Rawat

  2. Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Business, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, Uttrakhand, 248007, India

    Shivam Joshi

  3. Global Economics and Finance Cluster, School of Business, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, Uttrakhand, 248007, India

    Sushil Kumar Rai

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A.R.: Conceptualization and prepared the initial draft of the manuscript; S.J.: Methodology, review, and editing; S.K.R.: Validation, and complied the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sushil Kumar Rai.

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Table 4 Loop interaction diagram
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Rawat, A., Joshi, S. & Rai, S.K. Evaluating the issue of sustainable tourism with a system dynamic approach: evidence from Uttarakhand, India. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03711-1

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