Climate change and tourism: a scientometric analysis using CiteSpace

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe interaction between climate change and tourism has been one of the most critical and dynamic research areas in the field of sustainable tourism in recent years. In this paper, a scientometric analysis of 976 academic publications between 1990 and 2015 related to climate change and tourism is presented to characterize the intellectual landscape by identifying and visualizing the evolution of the collaboration network, the co-citation network, and emerging trends. The results show that the number of publications in this field has increased rapidly and it has become an increasingly interdisciplinary research subject. The most productive authors and institutions in this subject area are in Australia, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and European countries. In this paper, we identify the most pressing topics of climate change and tourism research, as represented in the existing literature, which include the consequences of climate change for tourism, necessary adaptations, the vulnerability of the tourism industry, tourist behaviour and demand in response to climate change, and emission reductions in the tourism sector. The paper presents an in-depth analysis of climate change and tourism research to better understand global trends and directions in this field that have emerged over the past 25 years.