ABSTRACT
The fact that tourism can have negative impacts upon the environment, including the use of natural resources in an unsustainable fashion, the creation of pollution and the displacement of peoples, suggests that the wealth creation from tourism development is not universally beneficial. The processes of wealth creation and resource allocation are of particular interest to economists, and concern over the effects of development upon the environment has led environmentalists and some economists to criticise free market economics as being an inefficient mechanism of resource allocation. One means of wealth creation that is reliant upon the use of physical and cultural resources is tourism, and subsequently this chapter examines how the relationship between the environment and tourism is interpreted from an economic perspective.
