Abstract
Overtourism occurs when the quality of life of a destination's residents and the tourists' experience begins to deteriorate; i.e. these two groups of actors, by their perception, determine at what point overtourism negatively affects a destination. Although the quality of life and health of both actors may deteriorate for environmental reasons, current literature reviews indicate that research on the "environmental limit" of overtourism is significantly limited.
However, the reviews are extensive, dealing with overtourism at the most general level. The aim of this study is to focus on overtourism more specifically and to determine: 1) to what extent are environmental impacts examined in connection with overtourism, and in response to these results; 2) to formulate relevant topics for future research on overtourism that will reflect sustainable development goals.
A systematic review of the literature dealing with overtourism was focused on two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. This study showed that out of a total of 259 articles, only nine (3%) deal with environmental impacts.
According to the focus of current literature, the negative influence of overtourism on the quality of life and experience in the destination is rather of a socio-economic nature. Because authors do not currently pay much attention to environmental overtourism, future research is relevant across different environmental topics and geographical locations.
For more effective destination management and timely regulation of tourism, it is necessary to identify the moment at which land-use changes (penetration of tourist infrastructure into protected areas and expansion of arable land to produce food for tourists), pollution of natural resources (increased concentrations of heavy metals from the means of transport) and energy consumption (emissions from non-renewable energy production) to deteriorate the quality of life and the health of residents and tourists' experience.