Protected areas shape the distribution of tourism across rural Europe

Abstract Protected areas (PAs) have expanded rapidly in recent decades to help mitigate the ongoing biodiversity crisis but are under increasing human pressures that jeopardize their conservation effectiveness. Tourism in PAs may galvanize efforts towards biodiversity conservation, but it can also be a major source of threats, leading to multiple adverse social and ecological impacts. Considering the recent Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to protect at least 30% of terrestrial ecosystems by 2030, understanding and assessing how and which PAs shape the spatial distribution of tourism is of great importance to biodiversity management and policy. In this study, we used a geospatial data set that describes the location and capacity of tourism accommodation in 81,185 local administrative units (LAUs) covering over 28 countries across rural Europe. After estimating the number of nights spent per LAU, we modelled the influence of PAs on the distribution of tourism throughout Europe while controlling for other social, economic and environmental covariates, but also for spatial autocorrelation. We reveal a positive link between highly protected PAs and the number of nights spent by tourists in LAUs. The attractiveness of these PAs for tourists may pose a conservation paradox, that is, highly protected PAs, which aim to safeguard nature tend to attract a disproportionate number of tourists, which may lead to nature degradation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.