Date Received: 07-05-2025 / Date Accepted: 28-01-2026 / Date Published: 29-04-2026
Tourism carrying capacity is a critical tool for sustainable tourism management, particularly important for community-based ecotourism (CBET) in Vietnam. Using a systematic review approach following the PRISMA protocol, from an initial 127 documents, the study selected 36 high-quality publications (2013-2023) from Scopus, Web of Science, and domestic sources to propose an indicator set comprising 23 components across 4 groups: environmental (5 indicators), social (6 indicators), economic (6 indicators), and management (6 indicators), of which 12 are core indicators and 11 are supplementary indicators. The weights of the 4 criteria groups were determined through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with 7 experts (CR = 4.78%): environmental carrying capacity 28.9%, management carrying capacity 26.0%, social carrying capacity 23.9%, and economic carrying capacity 20.5%. The Tourism Carrying Capacity Index (TCCI) was calculated using the formula TCCI = 0.289 × ENV + 0.239 × SOC + 0.205 × ECO + 0.260 × GOV, with classification thresholds: 0-0.2 (Extremely overloaded), 0.2-0.4 (Overloaded), 0.4-0.6 (Warning), 0.6-0.8 (Balanced), 0.8-1 (Safe). This is the first multidimensional assessment framework specifically designed for CBET in Vietnam, integrating the central role of local communities and the distinctive characteristics of small-scale ecological conservation.
