Sustainable Tourism Development from a Commons Theory perspective: an integrative literature review

Abstract

The need to work for the sustainability is notorious, such as tourism. This requires working the environmental, economic and social aspects in a balanced way, as well as the interests of the actors involved in tourism development. To this end, the Commons Theory is a supporter in this process, as it is based on collective actions to deal with shared resources. Thus, this study aimed to analyze existing research relationships in the scientific literature between commons and tourism, and the integrative systematic review was used, based on the five stages defined by Tranfield et al. (2003). The selected databases were Google Scholar, SciELO, Scopus and Web of Science, and the systematic searches took place on July 1^st, 2021. EndNote Web was used to manage the studies, as well as the Excel program. From a total of 163 studies, 22 were selected after using exclusion and inclusion criteria. The main results found were: a) the perception of a moderate increase in studies on the relationship between tourism and commons; b) the diversity of actors involved in the tourist commons; c) understanding of conflicts that must be addressed in a sustainable tourist destination; d) the use of different forms of regulation of shared resources in tourist activity; e) five actions to develop sustainable tourism based on the Commons Theory. Regarding future research, it is suggested to study whether actions taken in favor of sustainable tourism use the Commons Theory, and how the management and governance of this process are developed, in addition to identifying and analyzing which tourist resources are suitable for the practice of the commons.

Keywords
tourism destination; sustainable tourism; Commons Theory; tourist commons; integrative review