Economic and environmental sustainability of tourism in rural areas

Abstract

Aim of the study: The purpose of the work was to classify the communes of the West Pom-eranian Voivodeship in terms of the development of agritourism farms there.
Material and methods: The article uses Hellwig's parametric method, which was used to assess the attractiveness of the communes of the West Pomeranian voivodeship in terms of the development of agritourism farms in them. The use of aggregate analysis by a generalized k-means method was used. Cluster analysis served as a tool for exploratory data analysis.
Results: Due to the attractiveness of tourist attractions, the highest value was given to the municipalities of the Zachodniopomorskie voivodship belonging to the cluster of 2, and the poorest community belonging to the cluster 1. From the analysis of average normalized quan-titative variables it can be seen that the municipalities belonging to cluster 2 are more attrac-tive in terms of development of rural tourism than municipalities belonging to the cluster 1.
Conclusions: Uneven spatial distribution of tourism assets in the West Pomeranian Voi-vodeship can lead to variable tourist traffic. The presented research results may be an inspira-tion to carry out spatial division of individual municipalities into groups of diversification of tourist attractiveness and their impact on tourist traffic of regions.