Recreational ecology is an internationally evolving research field addressing the high demand for nature-based tourism and recreation, and its environmental impacts. This review aimed to analyze the research effort of recreational ecology studies published in four renowned journals in the field, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Tourism Management, the Journal of Environmental Management, and Environmental Management. Between 1976 and 2017, this review identified 145 papers focused on recreational ecology. The majority of research investigated the direct impacts of terrestrial activities in protected areas, in particular the impacts of walking and hiking on vegetation and trail conditions, and the impacts of wildlife viewing. A conceptual model was developed to describe the varied relationships between nature-based tourists and recreationists and the environment. Future research in recreational ecology should broaden its agenda to increase knowledge on indirect and long-term impacts; including on cryptic or less popular species; establish more specifically how the intensity of impacts depends on the amount of use other than in trampling studies; extend to other geographic areas such as developing countries, and nature-based spaces that are less protected and exposed to high visitation such as urban environments. Importantly, a much stronger focus needs to be on interdisciplinary approaches incorporating both environmental and social science techniques to determine ways of how visitor experiential needs can be reconciled with environmental conservation concerns in a rapidly increasing tourism and recreation economy.

Purpose – This paper demonstrates that the recommendations regarding visitor satisfaction and revisit intention reported in the international literature apply to the management of ecolodges in Sri Lanka. Design/Methodology/Approach – Data from 362 self-report questionnaires completed by visitors between January 2014 and January 2015 were analysed by structural modelling using SPSS and AMOS to confirm the significance that reported direct and indirect relationships of the latent factors ecolodge attributes, tourist motives, visitor satisfaction, and revisit intention have for Sri Lankan ecolodges. Findings – Responses of visitors to Sri Lankan ecolodges were like those of ecolodge visitors in other countries. Ecolodge attributes had a strong direct influence on both international tourist motives to visit Sri Lanka and visitor satisfaction. Further, travel motives and satisfaction have a substantial direct influence on tourist intentions to revisit individual ecolodges and hence Sri Lanka more broadly. Originality of the research – Having confirmed that the factors which influence satisfaction and revisit intention of visitors to Sri Lankan ecolodges are consistent with the research findings from other countries, this is the first study to demonstrate that recommendations from the international ecolodge literature are applicable to and can inform the management and sustainability of ecolodges in Sri Lanka.

Global demand for SCUBA diving activities in coastal areas continues to grow. Academic research has acknowledged that SCUBA diving can have ecological impacts. To understand the current state of knowledge this study applied the systematic quantitative literature review method (SQLR) to determine what evidence is available on ecological impacts from recreational SCUBA diving. In total 69 research articles about ecological impacts of SCUBA diving were analysed. This paper explored research trends, geographical distribution of research articles, nature of impact and management recommendations for future practice. The research found that SCUBA diving impacted through diver contact with coral reefs caused breakage, fragmentation and led to disease. 10 coral varieties were identified as impacted including some listed as (critically) endangered or vulnerable by the IUCN. Impacts can be minimized using non-regulatory and regulatory management strategies. We present a novel framework that connects diver characteristics with coral reef impacts and discuss how to apply this framework and guide future studies in this area of SCUBA diving research.

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes one of the greatest challenges in the history of the tourism industry. Travel restrictions imposed in many countries to manage the global spread and community transmission allow to study the environmental effects on tourism destinations. Here we investigate the case of wildlife tourism in Sri Lanka, a country that has experienced unsustainable wildlife tourism practices before COVID-19. Semi-structured interviews of wildlife tourism stakeholders of Sri Lanka’s national parks demonstrated how the travel restrictions during COVID-19 provided a temporary relief from environmental impacts. We discuss various measures on how to maintain more sustainable practices of wildlife tourism in Sri Lanka and other countries in the long term seizing this unusual opportunity.