Abstract
The study aims to evaluate research trends of ecotourism, which has attracted wide attention by both researchers and policymakers as an important way to realize sustainable tourism. Bibliometric analysis was carried through the 2,531 records related to ecotourism searching from Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), and Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP) databases from 1990 to 2016. A total of 4,138 keywords were divided into three categories: topical keywords, case-related keywords, and research methods–related keywords. They, respectively, were analyzed on overall development as well as the dynamic changes by three divided stages of ecotourism research. The results showed that Tourism Management was the most prolific journal. U.S.-based authors published more often than those from any other country, whereas among research institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the most prolific contributor. It also revealed that conservation was the key focus, protected area was the main study object, and sustainable tourism was the main aim. The top three countries for cases study were China, the United States, and South Africa, and the main methodologies were contingent valuation method and geographic information system. According to the dynamic analysis, research perspectives changed from ecotourism resources to management and subsequently expanded to multistakeholders involvement, with a rapid expansion of the case and implementation of quantitative research methods. With multidisciplinary involvement and multistakeholders participation, the study of tourist awareness and behavior on ecotourism would become the main aspects for deepening and concreting ecotourism research. Our findings provide a quantitative understanding of global ecotourism research features.
Highlights
Ecological environment pollution has become a difficult and restrictive factor of regional sustainable development (Zhang & Wen, 2008)
With increasing awareness of environment protection, ecotourism has become a special interest tourism and considered as an effective way of achieving sustainable development (Buckley, 1994; Pforr, 2001; Ramos & Prideaux, 2014).The concept of ecotourism emerged in the 1980s to address the negative impacts of traditional tourism, such as environmental damage and cultural erosion
The Conference Proceedings Citation Index, including Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (CPCI-S) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), revealing emerging trends and new ideas before they appear in journals, should not be neglected
Summary
Ecological environment pollution has become a difficult and restrictive factor of regional sustainable development (Zhang & Wen, 2008). With increasing awareness of environment protection, ecotourism has become a special interest tourism and considered as an effective way of achieving sustainable development (Buckley, 1994; Pforr, 2001; Ramos & Prideaux, 2014).The concept of ecotourism emerged in the 1980s to address the negative impacts of traditional tourism, such as environmental damage and cultural erosion. In a span of over 30 years of development, a large number of studies of ecotourism from various aspects emerged worldwide, such as framework establishment (Fennell, 2001; Fleischer, 2010; Ross et al, 1999), function and valuation
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