Measuring environmental and landscape-related potential for tourism development in rural areas and assessment of its co-occurrence with tourist movement: The case of Poland

Abstract The assessment of assets regarding their potential for tourism development is a well-recognised aspect of quantitative geographic research. This paper confines such matters to environmental and landscape-related attributes. The methodological objective is to propose a synthetic index for holistic measurement of a complex system of assets at the local level for Poland’s rural areas, followed by its empirical verification. The natural and landscape-related potential of a given area is perceived broadly, as the aspects involved are diverse and complementary: the quality of the landscape, the value of the environment, forest cover, relief, accessibility to surface waters and local bioclimate. The cognitive advantage of this research project is attained by confronting this index against a measure of tourist movement, as well as classifying rural areas by means of combining both dimensions. A considerable number of communes in Poland are characterised by relatively high potential, albeit they are not being exploited for tourism development to a correspondingly large degree.