Tourism is one of the economic driving forces of Spain: the consolidation of existing tourist destinations and new market niches encourage an upward trend of tourism. The economic impacts produced by tourism are one of the major concerns of the authorities; the question is whether it is possible to continue growing without compromising our environment. This work attempts to answer this issue by analysing one of the tourism segments with higher growth in recent years: rural tourism. Using a model of partial least squares (PLS), we will analyse the environmental impacts from the point of view of the supply and its relationships with the environmental management conducted. We will also analyse the rural establishments from a global point of view and, depending on their category, explain the factors which determine the sustainable behaviour of providers, and identify that the establishments of low categories have a more sustainable conduct.

Nature tourism has a strong potential, and as a result of this tourism activity, the environmental concern is considered an important element which guides business and tourism activity. This element also generates the change in the society's behaviour, in order to conciliate economic and political interest with the environmental ones, with the final aim to guarantee the existence of these resources in the future and the tourism competitiveness of these natural areas. To get this purpose of sustainable development, in the case of natural areas where it is difficult to control the carrying capacity because the access is uncontrolled in them, it is important to attract visitors which are identify with the destination, its resources and what it has to offer. In this way the visitors have a behavior at the destination that will help to achieve its sustainability. In this sense, the segmentation has an important role in the development, management and success of a natural area in a competitive tourism environment. Because the segmentation allows knowing visitors, their preference, wishes and needs, and it makes easy the adjustment of supply. At the same time, this activity allows to lead the communication actions of a tourism destination or area toward the visitors who are identified with the destination offers. This guarantees the sustainability of destination over time. The purpose of this paper it is to identify visitors who have a behavior and interest in protected natural areas, and who will be consider as appropriate target to direct the promotion to encourage their visit. This paper includes the analysis of the type of visitors in the area of Serranía Alta de Cuenca, in Spain, according to their features, the type of travel and their opinion about the destination. This study provides relevant information to guide the management of tourism activity in this area. Latent Gold 4.5  is the statistical software used to make the segmentation. This technique is different from other by its strict statistical formulation which puts the visitors into group by the probability of belonging to each segment.

The increase of environmental problems due to the tourist activity has given rise to conservation of environment in destinations. In this sense, regional, national, and international regulatory provisions have proliferated during the last years. This article analyses the perception in the society about this kind of distinguishing signs, for the specific case of protected natural areas. Since local population participates in the appropriate development of protected areas, the knowledge and the communication of protection’s forms are necessary to achieve the purpose for which they were created. This article uses a structural equation model to know the relationship between implication of local population, knowledge and perception of forms to protect natural areas, and the influence on the support of actions related with these forms of protection. This article represents a sustainable innovation with the aim of getting recommendations about the use of distinguishing signs by tourist authorities, to achieve a good knowledge and communication of these signs, and an optimal management of destinations. The main result is that the perception of the effects produced by figures of protection influences on the support of actions related with these figures; in this way, the more positive perception is, the higher the support is.

In EU governments, there is widespread concern of the current trends in small businesses. Their importance in generating wealth and employment justifies the adoption of economic measures to foster their development and durability. Experience shows that few European micro-enterprises are handed on to a second generation of owners and almost none to a third.Moreover, in times of crisis, the notion that micro-enterprises (including self-employed or businesspeople with no employees) should become the first link in economic recovery and employment generation appears recurrently.This paper studies the distinguishing features of such companies in a Spanish province through a descriptive statistical analysis of the basic data and ratios in their accounting statements.

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