Carrying Capacity and Adaptive Visitor Use Management for Sustainable Parks and Protected Recreation Areas: A Critical Narrative Review

This study examines carrying capacity in parks and protected recreation areas as a measurement, monitoring, and adaptation component of sustainable visitor use management. For a concept-focused critical narrative review, Scopus and the Web of Science Core Collection were searched, and 2493 records were identified. After removing 819 duplicates, 1674 unique records were screened. Overall, 370 records were evaluated as topically eligible. A 78-source critical-synthesis core, comprising central database records, foundational books, and institutional documents identified through citation chaining, was evaluated against seven common criteria. The findings demonstrate that carrying capacity is not a single, context-independent visitor count. Rather, it is an adaptive process requiring the definition of desired ecological and experiential conditions, the monitoring of indicators and standards, and management intervention when thresholds are exceeded. The study’s contribution lies in comparing ROS, LAC, VAMP, CCAP, VIM, VERP, and IVUMF using common criteria, explaining the interdependence of physical, ecological, social, managerial, and economic dimensions, and jointly evaluating geographic transferability and digital data governance. In conclusion, sustainable management depends more on the organizational implementation of an indicator–standard–monitoring–action chain than on a numerical limit.