Sustainable Development Modelling of Regional Agritourism Clusters (Case of Belarus)

Abstract

Goal – construction of models that describe the social, environmental, and economic sustainability of rural areas in the context of the development of agritourism, which would make it possible to determine the leading factors for their sustainable development. Research methodology – the research applied the procedures of goal setting, measurement, establishing criteria, forming and choosing alternatives, algorithms, methods of PLS‑PM modeling, and methods of qualitative modeling. Score/results – a systematic solution to the numerous environmental, social, and economic problems of the development of agritourism cluster is not achievable without appropriate economic and mathematical models and tools for their support, which would make it possible to accurately predict the main indicators of the sustainable development of agritourism, identify the main factors of sustainable development, determine the degree of the effectiveness of certain management decisions. Originality/value – based on the applied software products developed in this way, support systems for making complex management decisions can be formed that make it possible to identify all potential scenarios for the development of any complex systems and transitions between them, as well as provide a predictive function for evaluating key blocks. In the future, the proposed toolkit can be used to model and optimize the sustainable development of specific tourism investment projects in rural regions, as well as to select investment areas at the regional agritourism cluster level.