This book attempts to overcome past research negligence by focusing exclusively on tourism development, planning and impacts in a wide range of Latin American countries. It aims to widen the documentation and understanding of tourism in the sub-region in the English literature. The book has ten...

This chapter reports on the tourism experience of Costa Rica. It reveals how, despite being a geographically small country whose land use initially was focused on agriculture and livestock, Costa Rica is a nation in which tourism has become the main source of income in the past 10 years....

The value chain, as an analytical tool, has been used for more than 50 years as a way to better understand how agri-food products move and gain value from the farm gate to the table. Over the past 20 years, increasing attention has been paid to questions of sustainability within value chains and...

Current consumption patterns in Costa Rica and in other countries are driven by misinformation and lack of knowledge concerning the nutritional value and sustainability of food products. Unhealthy diets are a major reason for health problems, environmental degradation and food biodiversity loss. To ...

This chapter explores overtourism in the rural context of Guanacaste (Costa Rica). The area has experienced intense development of residential tourism, and the chapter focuses on the ensuing ecological conflicts over water between rural communities and residential tourism investments supported by...

This book is concerned with the various dimensions of overtourism, including the social and economic impacts of excessive tourism and the management and policy measures to address it. The 10 chapters present case studies contributing to the overtourism discussion from diverse perspectives and...

The first biological control activities in Costa Rica date from around 1915, but it was only in the 1950s that studies were conducted on the introduction, mass rearing and release of biocontrol agents in crops such as fruit trees, coffee, bananas, sugarcane, rice and pineapple. Subsequently, the...

This book offers a compilation of transdisciplinary contributions that demonstrate the features of the relationship between tourism, health, wellbeing and protected areas. Attention is given to case studies stemming from current and future trends around these topics. Many of these case studies take ...

The purpose of this chapter is to present Costa Rica as a model of sustainable tourism development that successfully supports the wellbeing of remote rural communities. The shifts in awareness that led Costa Rica to value and conserve its natural resources are thus discussed, as well as the...

This chapter explores the expenditure and stay behaviour of tourists, and the capacity of these two variables in improving the sustainability of a nature-based destination such as Costa Rica. Two equations explaining the expenditure and stay patterns of international tourists arriving in Costa Rica ...