Sustainable Tourism in Romania: Integrating Economic, Social and Environmental Dimensions

Tourism and sustainable development are two interlinked areas, as tourism in its traditional form can bring significant economic and social benefits, but can also have a negative impact on the environment and local communities. Due to global changes that have occurred in recent years, such as population growth, accelerated urbanisation, climate change and threats to biodiversity, research in tourism and sustainable development is becoming essential to create a more responsible and balanced approach to these activities. In this paper we have focused on presenting the evolution of tourism over the period 1992-2021 and testing linear multiple regression analyses to establish the nature and extent of relationships between tourism, economic, social and environmental indicators, thereby demonstrating the impact of tourism on sustainable development. The econometric applications carried out in this work - a combined model for studying the intention of tourists to return to a tourist destination, a regression model taking into account spatial elements for evaluating the defining characteristics of accommodation units in Romanian tourism and a growth optimisation model taking into account the influence of the environment - allow the quantification of different categories of impact generated by tourism activities.