{"title":"Potential suitability mapping evaluation for ecotourism development in Darjeeling Himalayan region of India","authors":"Debasish Roy, Priyanka Kundu, Surajit Paul, Bipul Chandra Sarkar","doi":"10.1080/14724049.2023.2272059","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTEcotourism is the nature-based economic sector essential for sustainable local economic development. The present study aims to design suitable sites for ecotourism using the GIS-based Criteria Importance Through Inter Criteria Correlation (CRITIC) technique in the Darjeeling Himalayan region of India. The study attempts eight essential factors for evaluating the suitability map. The suitability map was categorized into four classes: Highly Suitable, Moderately Suitable, Marginally Suitable, and Least Suitable. The result revealed 786.23 sq. km (33.81%) as highly suitable, 797.549 sq. km (34.30%) as moderately suitable, 438.48 sq. km (18.86%) as marginally suitable, and 303.01 sq. km (13.03%) as least suitable. The result shows northern and north-western parts, namely Jorebunglow Sukiapokhri, Mirik, Kurseong, Rangli-Rangliot blocks, and the north-eastern parts Kalimpong I and Kalimpong II blocks, as highly suitable zones for ecotourism development. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and area under curve (AUC) analyses were used to validate the suitability map. The model validation with an AUC-ROC value was assigned 0.845, suggesting that the outcome is highly reliable with ground truth. The study can be helpful for policymakers to understand the spatial information of ecotourism in Darjeeling Himalaya.KEYWORDS: Potential ecotourismDarjeeling HimalayaCRITIC modelmulticollinearity testgeospatial data Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).","PeriodicalId":39714,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Ecotourism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Ecotourism","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2023.2272059","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACTEcotourism is the nature-based economic sector essential for sustainable local economic development. The present study aims to design suitable sites for ecotourism using the GIS-based Criteria Importance Through Inter Criteria Correlation (CRITIC) technique in the Darjeeling Himalayan region of India. The study attempts eight essential factors for evaluating the suitability map. The suitability map was categorized into four classes: Highly Suitable, Moderately Suitable, Marginally Suitable, and Least Suitable. The result revealed 786.23 sq. km (33.81%) as highly suitable, 797.549 sq. km (34.30%) as moderately suitable, 438.48 sq. km (18.86%) as marginally suitable, and 303.01 sq. km (13.03%) as least suitable. The result shows northern and north-western parts, namely Jorebunglow Sukiapokhri, Mirik, Kurseong, Rangli-Rangliot blocks, and the north-eastern parts Kalimpong I and Kalimpong II blocks, as highly suitable zones for ecotourism development. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and area under curve (AUC) analyses were used to validate the suitability map. The model validation with an AUC-ROC value was assigned 0.845, suggesting that the outcome is highly reliable with ground truth. The study can be helpful for policymakers to understand the spatial information of ecotourism in Darjeeling Himalaya.KEYWORDS: Potential ecotourismDarjeeling HimalayaCRITIC modelmulticollinearity testgeospatial data Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Ecotourism seeks to advance the field by examining the social, economic, and ecological aspects of ecotourism at a number of scales, and including regions from around the world. Journal of Ecotourism welcomes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research, particularly where it contributes to the dissemination of new ideas and models of ecotourism planning, development, management, and good practice. While the focus of the journal rests on a type of tourism based principally on natural history - along with other associated features of the man-land nexus - it will consider papers which investigate ecotourism as part of a broader nature based tourism, as well as those works which compare or contrast ecotourism/ists with other forms of tourism/ists.