Research on the Sustainable Development of Ecotourism in Protected Areas: A Review

Due to the unique function of protected areas in species and nature resources conservation, sustainability has become the primary consideration in the development of ecotourism in protected areas. This paper focuses on this issue, and reviews the current literatures in this field, tries to give a comprehensive review which can also be organized in logical sense, classifies three major paradigms about the current research: research on the development of ecotourism in protected areas, research on the external indicators which affect the sustainability of ecotourism in protected areas, researches on the assessment of sustainability of ecotourism in protected areas, and finally points out that the further study in this field must be carried out by inter-disciplines, such as cultural economics and ecological economics.