Examination of the Sustainable Rural Tourism Potential of the Br?ko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina Using a Fuzzy Approach Based on Group Decision Making

Adis Puška, Dragan Pamucar, Ilija Stojanović, Fausto Cavallaro, Arturas Kaklauskas and Abbas Mardani
Additional contact information
Adis Puška: Institute for Scientific Research and Development, Brcko District BiH, Bulevara mira 30, 76120 Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Dragan Pamucar: Department of Logistics, Military Academy, University of Defence in Belgrade, Pavla Jurišića Šturma 33, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Ilija Stojanović: College of Business Studies, Al Ghurair University, Dubai P.O. Box 37374, UAE
Fausto Cavallaro: Department of Economics, University of Molise, Via De Sanctis, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Arturas Kaklauskas: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 10221 Vilnius, Lithuania

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-23

Abstract: Tourism is an economic activity with great contribution for the development of many countries. To develop rural areas, tourism is especially important and need to be improved in these areas. The Government of Br?ko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina has decided to have tourism improvement as one of main objectives in their development strategy focusing on better conditions for development of tourism. Investments in tourism should be applied to the entire area of the Br?ko District. Since Br?ko District mainly consists of rural areas, it is necessary to invest in rural tourism. The first step of this study was to determine the tourist potential of rural areas. The determination of rural tourist potential in Br?ko District was carried out with the assistance of the Br?ko District Government. For this purpose, the method of expert decision-making was used, and three experts were selected who evaluated six rural settlements. To obtain results based on expert evaluation, two multi-criteria methods were used: the Full Consistency Method (FUCOM) for determining the importance of criteria and the fuzzy Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to the COmpromise Solution (MARCOS) method to rank rural settlements in terms of their tourism potential. The results showed that the settlement of Bijela has the best rural tourist potential, while the settlement of Grbavica has the least potential. The results obtained by applying this model showed how rural tourism in Br?ko District can be improved. The research model for testing the tourism potential has shown good results and can be applied in other branches of tourism with some adaptation to certain branches of tourism.

Keywords: rural tourism; tourism potential; FUCOM method; MARCOS method; expert assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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