Inclusive tourism in protected rural areas: A systematic review and network analysis

Abstract

Background Inclusive tourism in protected rural areas lies at the confluence of fair access, community well-being and conservation of biodiversity. This review defines inclusive tourism as the development and management of tourism that enables tourists and host communities facing physical, sensory, social, economic or political barriers to participate safely, equitably and significantly in tourism benefits and decision-making processes. The scholarship on tourism, accessibility and protected areas is growing, but data on physical access, community participation, benefit sharing and visitor management is disjointed. Method This study combines bibliometric network analysis and a systematic literature review guided by PRISMA 2020, with data collected from Scopus on September 8, 2025. Publication trends, journal outlets, countries, collaboration patterns and keyword evolution were analyzed on the full bibliometric corpus of 498 publications, a final selection of 46 empirical journal articles was retained for full-text qualitative synthesis. Result The number of publications has grown since the mid-2010s, peaking in the period 2021–2024. The review highlights three consistent findings: access in protected rural areas is uneven, particularly for people with disabilities; equitable benefit sharing is associated with strong community engagement; and inclusive visitor management requires the integration of interpretation, zoning, route management and multi-stakeholder governance, rather than relying on infrastructure alone. Conclusion The study confirms that accessibility, participation and conservation governance should be addressed as a combined management problem in protected rural areas to achieve more sustainable and equitable inclusive tourism. This study presents a brief integrative framework and discusses measurement and implementation shortcomings and priorities for future research and policy.

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