Analyzing Research Trends in Marine Sport Industry and Future Directions

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to analyze research articles on marine sports depending on research time period, research types, research topics, and research methods and to discuss future research directions in the field of marine sports based on the analysis. The current study collected 338 research articles related to marine sport, which were published in domestic academic journals from 2012 to 2021. Bibliometric analysis was performed to analyze the collected research articles. The major results were as follows. First, the overall temporal trend of publications indicated linear increase. Second, the majority of research was conducted by a single or two authors in marine sport research. Third, with respect to research type trends, the present study found that descriptive research took the greatest portion of research types. Meanwhile, researchers tend to rely on regression analysis, structural equations modeling (SEM), and analysis of variance to test their research hypotheses. In terms of research tier trends, the present study found that the majority of research had been published in academic journals indexed by Korean Citation Index (KCI). The results of analysis of research areas indicated that the number of publications in humanities and social sciences was greater the one in sport sciences. Lastly, the current study found that the majority of research pay tremendous attention to the topics of overall marine sport industry rather than specific marine sport activities. Based on the discussion on the results, several future directions for marine sport research were suggested.