**6. Conclusions**

In this paper, we provided a holistic outlook of the different perspectives under which scholars deal with the joint topics of agritourism and sustainability.

We performed a systematic literature review to reach a systematization, in topics and themes, of the scientific literature dealing with agritourism as a means to support the sustainable development of rural areas. Moreover, we provided a deeper analysis of the results of the literature review, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the current streams of the literature with respect to the definition of a comprehensive body of knowledge really able to depict a big picture of agritourism as a sustainable rural development strategy.

Our research highlights that the scientific literature has a very positive vision of agritourism. This vision is in line with the goals of the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [6]. Agritourism could lead to the reduction of poverty through tourism, generating employment opportunities, creating synergies with agriculture and local service provider sectors, achieving gender equality, and stimulating the development of basic infrastructures such as roads, ports, and airport facilities.

We found that scholars emphasize the importance of setting agritourism activities, both for farms and for the rural community, to revitalize the rural communities through a sustainable development strategy. According to a recent report provided by Fortune Business Insights [88], the global agritourism market is anticipated to exhibit astonishing growth soon. Starting from a market size of USD 69.24 billion, the report forecasts it reaching USD 117.37 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.42% during the forecast period. Nevertheless, agritourism still represents a niche market if compared to the whole tourism industry. Evidence from empirical studies suggests some limitations and barriers to agritourism development, including fragmentation of tourism promotion efforts among involved farmers and destination managemen<sup>t</sup> organizations [89], lack of entrepreneurial farsightedness among farmers [90], and the lack of financial resources [91]. The analysis of motivations limiting the exploitation of agritourism in supporting rural development goes beyond the scope of this research. We aimed to provide an outlook on how the scientific literature dealt with the topic of agritourism to support the sustainable development of rural areas. In any case, the potential benefits of agritourism activities in rural settings and barriers to agritourism development deserve to be holistically deepened and generalized.

Some limitations affect this research. Methodological choices made in the paper, including the selection criteria of the papers for detailed analysis, dealt with relevant sources in previous literature. However, these restrictions could lead to the exclusion of interesting works. Despite the Scopus database being probably the world's largest one, this study is limited to the scientific papers available

in this single one. Moreover, inclusion criteria adopted for the human-based review of representative and relevant papers limited the number of selected papers by excluding some interesting articles. However, although these works were excluded from the human-based analysis, these were nevertheless considered in the LDA procedure.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization of the research, S.A. and A.M.F.; Supervision, S.A. and A.V.; methodology, A.M.F. and C.R.; data curation C.R. and B.A.P.; formal analysis, A.M.F., C.R. and B.A.P.; validation S.A. and A.V.; writing—original draft preparation: introduction S.A.; The Agritourist Farms, C.R.; Sustainability Impacts C.R. and A.M.F.; Methodology A.M.F. and B.A.P.; Results: S.A., A.M.F. and C.R.; Discussion, B.A.P. and A.V., Conclusions S.A., A.M.F. and A.V.; writing—review and editing, S.A. and A.M.F.; project administration, A.V.; funding acquisition, A.V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was partially funded by MISE (Ministero Italiano dello Sviluppo Economico) under the project "MEC—Marketplace Ecosostenibile Calabria": CUP: B31B20000520005.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
