Developing Health Tourism in Healthier Rural Areas: the Role of Matrix-resources

In the last 15 years, environmental medicine research has highlighted the negative effects of urban pollution on human health. Despite this, no review of the medical literature has emerged to examine the different forms of pollution and to assist in the development of tourism innovation in rural areas. The main objective of this paper is to understand if the presence of safety, clean air, silence, dark at night, and other (matrix) resources – defined as opposites of various forms of pollutants – may act as additional resources for companies and rural tourist destinations that wish to innovate their supply through the development of health and wellness tourism. This paper analyses the results of environmental medicine through the lens of a “resource - based view” of the firm (R-BV). It was thus possible to identify a range of 7 matrix-resources with the required characteristics. A wide series of health and wellness tourism experiences – lasting from 1 to 8 weeks – can be proposed as a tool for sustainable economic development of firms operating in those rural areas that have the right resources, whether or not they are already endowed with wellness infrastructures.