Ekonomiczne Problemy Turystyki

The paper concerns the issues of geographical and natural determinants of the development of tourism. Specifically, it examines the influence of the environment on the distribution of agritourist farms, which are a supply-side factor of tourism. Two categories of components of the environment are analysed. The first category has a general positive impact on tourism (improving the attractiveness of the area from the tourist’s point of view) and a neutral or negative impact on agricultural production. The components of the second group are generally neutral for tourism, but beneficial for agriculture. They favour maintaining farming activity and discourage farmers from turning to other economic activities or taking up supplementary business, including rural tourism. The influence of individual factors were tested using correlation methods. The results of the study corroborate the hypothesis about the significant influence of certain geographic and natural factors (forest cover, share of surface waters, share of protected areas, quality of agricultural production space) on the development of agritourism farms, as well as the directions of specific types of relationships.