The ecosystem services gap in tourism research: From harm minimization to benefit recognition

Abstract

Tourism research has long framed the natural environment as a fragile asset requiring protection from tourism-induced harm — generating important insights into impact mitigation, but producing a blind spot: the measurable benefits that ecosystems provide to tourism remain largely unrecognized. This research note documents an ecosystem services gap — the disconnect between the ecosystem services (ES) framework, now central to environmental science and policy, and its near-absence from tourism journals. Drawing on bibliometric evidence, structured literature review, and proof-of-concept examples from ES valuation research, I argue that closing this gap is both analytically necessary and practically urgent. Reframing ecosystems as productive assets rather than passive constraints would strengthen welfare-based arguments for conservation investment and open new avenues for tourism demand modeling and policy design.