and visitation patterns within the religious tourism niche market have changed (Shinde, 2007a, 2017). For example, while religious rituals and performances are at the core of the pilgrimage economy that revolves around ‘the concept of providing for the God and a sacred routine focusing on conspicuous consumption’ (Rösel, 1983, p. 51), recreational activities are generally more hedonistic in nature. This mix of sacred and secular motivations and activities – a distinguishing feature of religious tourism – can have significant impacts on religious tourism destinations in terms of numbers of visitors, when these visitors come, and the activities in which they seek to participate. Also, outside of special religious events and feast days on religious calendars, most religious tourism destinations, like any other mass tourist destination, experience peak visitation during weekends, particularly by local and regional residents (Shinde, 2018). At the same time, as noted below, increasing religious tourism by international visitors is beginning to lead to a lack of seasonality, with religious tourism taking place throughout the entire week.
Some scholarship has focused on the broader philosophical aspects of these relationships, including cosmology, mythology, rituals, geography of sacred places, cultural performances, and religious-cultural heritage as related to religious tourism (e.g. McIntosh and Prentice, 1999; Olsen, 2003; Andriotis, 2011). However, until comparatively recently, little has been written on the more mundane aspects of religious tourism, such as infrastructure development, site management, and policy-making (e.g. Shackley, 2001; Petrillo, 2003; Raj and Morpeth, 2007; Rotherham, 2007; Shani et al., 2007; Henderson, 2011; Shinde, 2012a). Also, even though religious tourism causes negative environmental impacts at host destinations (Holden, 2003; Olsen and Timothy, 2006; Shinde, 2007a), little has been written on these impacts of religious tourism both at local and broader geographical scales.
Tourism and Environment
At a basic level, pilgrimage refers to the movement of people to a religious or sacred site. In many cases, such as the Kumbha Mela in India, which has approximately 120 million participants (both pilgrims and tourists), the sheer scale and magnitude of these pilgrimages makes them no different from mass tourism in terms of their environmental impacts (Shinde, 2018).
There is a vast literature on the relationships between tourism and the environment (e.g. Holden and Fennell, 2012; Ballantyne and Packer, 2013; Mostafanezhad et al., 2016; Dowling and Newsome, 2018). Within this literature, scholars have proposed several models to understand these relationships better. For example, Cohen (1978, p. 228) has presented a conceptual model suggesting four key ways tourism and the environment are related. These four ways include the intensity of tourist site-use (i.e. the numbers of visitors, duration of stay; their activities and facilities at their disposal); the resiliency of the ecosystem (i.e. the capability of the place to absorb the impacts); the pace of development (i.e. of tourist infrastructure); and the transformational character of touristic developments (i.e. attractions and further development). Cohen argued further that a combination of these factors would result in ‘the accumulated environmental effects of growth, urbanization, commercialization, and functional diversification on the original tourist core areas’. Several studies have since illustrated the impacts on the natural and human-built sociocultural and physical environments of host destinations (e.g. Singh, 2002; Ambrósio, 2003; Alipour et al., 2017).
While being debated, criticised, and modified over the past few decades (see Butler, 2006), another significant model is Butler’s (1980) Tourist Area Life Cycle, which continues to provide a fundamental understanding of how increases in tourism flows alter the physical environment in a tourist destination. Based on carrying capacity concerns, this model outlines the different stages through which tourism development occurs. While this model has been widely used in leisure-oriented tourism to help develop appropriate tourism developmental and marketing polices, its application to religious sites has been fairly limited, with the exception of a comparative study of four religious destinations in Europe (Ambrósio, 2003) and a recent study of religious tourism in Mashdad, Iran (Alipour et al., 2017).
Scholars have also used a systems approach to understand the relationships between tourism and environment and their growing complexities (Leiper, 1990; Holden, 2007; Buckley, 2011). While host destination environments attract tourists, the needs of these tourists and the tourism infrastructure developed to meet those needs alter these same environments. One model, proposed by Holden (2007, p. 9), notes that the tourism system has a range of different inputs, including nature and human resources, which resources are made available to consumers through a market system and regulated by government policies to attract investment. These inputs are combined with three distinct but interrelated subsystems – tourism retailing (e.g. corporate and independent travel agents and agencies), destinations (e.g. natural and cultural attractions, local transportation and accommodation infrastructure), and transportation (e.g. global airlines, car rental, and bus companies). These inputs and subsystems, when combined with different societal influence (e.g. changing consumer tastes, demographics, environmental and media, and technology), create a series of positive and negative outputs or outcomes that have the potential to either bring positive or negative cultural and environmental change to a destination. Holden’s model also places a focus on broader contemporary environmental issues such as carbon emissions from flights, and tourist satisfaction.
Another stream of research regarding tourism—environment relationships is how tourists interact with and experience the environment. Several studies have shown that different types of tourists desire different environmental interactions as a part of their tourism experience (e.g. Young, 1999; Shoval, 2000; Andriotis, 2009). Iso-Ahola (1980), for example, identifies four major types of experiences tourists have with the environment in a leisure—recreational setting:
• environment as a setting for action (i.e. where interaction between tourists and the environment takes place)
• environment as a social system (i.e. where environment is the setting where social interaction and bonding takes place)
• environment as emotional territory (i.e. the emotional attachment people have to an environment)
• environment as self (i.e. where the environment and oneself become inseparable).
Research has also focused on the perceptions of residents regarding environmental tourism impacts (Liu et al., 1987; Mesch and Manor, 1998; Jutla, 2000; Terzidou et al., 2008). These studies reinforce the idea that while residents acknowledge the economic benefits of tourism, they are not always aware of the negative sociocultural and environmental impacts of tourism and their role in exacerbating these impacts (Dasgupta et al., 2006; Gursoy et al., 2004; Kamarudin and Nizam, 2013; Pohoaţă et al., 2013).
Within this thematic literature, however, very little has been written regarding how religion intersects with tourism and the environment (see Holden, 2003; Olsen, Chapter 2, this volume; Timothy, 2012), although some research has focused on spiritual experiences in leisure outdoor settings (e.g.,Heintzman, 2009, 2014).
Religion and the Environment
In their edited book entitled Religion and Environment, Tanner and Mitchell (2002, p. 53) provide a working definition of religion ‘as belief in a supernatural power or powers to be obeyed and worshipped and its expression in conduct and ritual’. They also define the environment as including ‘all the natural features of land, water, flora and fauna which supports human life and influence its development and character’. Tanner and Mitchell note that ‘the intensity of one’s experience of their own environment depends to a large extent on its relevance to their livelihood and [the] religious beliefs with which they approach it’. These religious beliefs, along with their associated religious activities, have both direct/indirect and spatial/temporal effects on the natural environment.
For example,
