摘要：Tourist values are one of the most significant factors determining spatial distribution of tourist traffic. One of the type of such values are natural ones, which are especially important for rural vacations. Perception of those values' quality may be strongly subjective, however fact of the law protection of particular area or place may be treated as a specific determinant in this matter. Therefore the paper is an attempt to find a relationship between size of protected areas, as well as their percentage share in general area of counties, and number of tourist accommodation establishments (including agritourism lodgings) within those administrative units in years 2012 and 2015. The research area was Eastern Region of Poland (by NUTS 1 classification), which covers Podlaskie, Lubelskie, Podkarpackie and Świętokrzyskie provinces. The advantage of such delimitation is in analysis of areas that, thanks to their agricultural nature, seem to be predestined for rural tourism and where at the same time are many forms of nature protection. Moreover, inner landscape diversification of the research area (from lake sites and plains in the north to mountains in the south) gives an opportunity of inside comparison of obtained results and provides some representativeness of carried out analysis. In the paper statistical measures were used and the main source of data were databases of Central Statistical Office of Poland.
