Environmental Responsibility and Sustainable Tourism: Emerging Trends and Research

At a time when the global tourism system stands exposed to ecological crisis, social upheaval, and shifting ethical expectations, Environmental Responsibility and Sustainable Tourism: Emerging Trends and Research offers a timely and necessary contribution. This volume brings together leading and emerging scholars who interrogate the dominant models of tourism development and advance fresh insights into what environmental responsibility truly demands. Rather than treating sustainability as a static goal or technical fix, the book explores it as a contested and evolving practice—shaped by governance structures, behavioural dynamics, cultural narratives, and power relations. Across chapters spanning overtourism, mobility, climate accountability, participatory planning, regenerative tourism, and more-than-human ethics, the volume invites a shift from managerial compliance to ethical, place-based, and transformative engagements. A core contribution of this book lies in its multidimensional approach: responsibility is not confined to individual tourists or isolated businesses, but is redefined as a shared obligation across systems, scales, and generations. Drawing on diverse theoretical frameworks—from political ecology and resilience thinking to posthumanism and systems theory—authors examine how tourism can be both a driver of environmental degradation and a site of innovation, resistance, and care. Each chapter offers grounded insights from empirical contexts: from coastal governance and protected area management to campsite behaviour and Nordic regenerative enterprises. Collectively, they move the conversation beyond token sustainability, toward models that emphasize justice, reciprocity, inclusion, and planetary wellbeing. This volume is essential reading for scholars, doctoral students, policymakers, and tourism practitioners seeking to understand the future of sustainable tourism in an era of planetary uncertainty. It challenges conventional sustainability discourses while offering new pathways for research, design, and action. Environmental Responsibility and Sustainable Tourism is not just a state-of-the-art synthesis—it is a provocation. A call to think differently, act responsibly, and engage tourism as a force not only for minimising harm, but for enabling regeneration in a rapidly changing world.