Environmental sustainability assessment of urban tourism (Case study: Rasht city)

Nowadays, sustainability has become one of the most important issues in urban tourism since the growth and development of urban tourism due to the adoption of a massive volume of tourists has many positive and negative consequences in the ecological environment of the region. Hence, by assessing tourism sustainability, it is possible to plan and adopt necessary decisions to expand positive outcomes and reduce negative effects. The Rasht city welcomes many tourists due to its natural location and its cultural and man-made attractions. The purpose of this research is to measure the environmental sustainability of urban tourism in Rasht considering the region's biological capacity and answering the question that whether the biological capacity of the area is proportional to the amount of resources consumed by tourists or not? The research is based on the descriptive-analytical method and used ecological footprint model. Number of tourist in the study area has been considered as the statistical society in this study. Therefore, 384 questionnaires were distributed according to the Cochran model through two regular and random sampling methods to reach the preliminary data. According to the results, the ecological footprint is 907177 hectares and the biological capacity of the area is 662871 hectares. Thus, the lack of proportionality between the available resources and the amount of consumption and, consequently, the environmental instability of the regional can be observed which causes pressure on the ecological environment. As a result, it seems that planning to achieve sustainability is an essential issue in the study area.