A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE VALUATION MODELS OF TOURIST CARRYING CAPACITY, FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF THE ASINARA NATIONAL PARK IN SARDINIA (ITALY)

The Asinara National Park shows the peculiarity that it is a small island located very near to the big island of Sardinia (Italy). The site access is (relatively) easy to control and to program with the aim of a full territorial government. In fact, this specific form of the natural protected area's isolation is particularly suitable for the experimentation of new government policies based on visitors' access regulation. Within this new framework, we will consider the usefulness of the concept of Tourist Carrying Capacity (TCC). Due to the fact that there are many ways for assessing the TCC, a methodological choice is necessary: in order to identify the approach that best fits the purposes of the Asinara Park plan, we performed a standard review at international level of the scientific literature on the models used to calculate the TCC to be used for managing a natural protected area.