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Protected areas play an important role in the conservation and protection of biodiversity of particular territories, especially of ecosystems that provide resources for living organisms, including human beings. Different studies highlight the importance of biodiversity and its associated benefits in terms of ecosystem services of protected areas. The economic assessment of ecosystem services and biodiversity becomes a viable solution to help the policy maker to make decisions on the environmental preservation of these areas according to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. Nonetheless, very few studies provide an economic evaluation of the benefits of protected areas. To advance the current debate on the economic evaluation of the benefits provided by protected areas, the present paper purposes an integrated approach. It presents an overview of main ecosystem services’ mapping techniques currently available to researchers and policy makers and offers a systematic review carried out for the period 2015–2020 at an international level. The main findings are particularly attractive for the Gargano National Park (GNP) in the south of Italy, which is recognised as being a biodiversity hot spot at global level. The current study provides useful guidance for the assessment of trade-offs, the support to policy makers, and the provision of efficient allocation of public resources for protected areas.

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The present study investigates residents' perception of tourism as a sustainable development driver and explores the reasons why residents recognize their own place of residence as an attractive tourism destination. The work considers one of Italy's most visited tourist destinations (Puglia) and uses quantitative (i.e., inferential and text mining) and qualitative (i.e., survey) approaches. Main results reveal that socioeconomic and environmental factors positively affect residents' perception of tourism as a driver of sustainable development. Furthermore, the spatial dimensions of the territories of Puglia, perceived by indigenous local knowledge, are key elements for tourist attractiveness of its destinations.

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