Evaluation of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets: the international collaboration trilemma in interdisciplinary research

Abstract

Context Tourism plays a critical role in biodiversity conservation with at least 12 of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets being directly or indirectly related to tourism. Aims As Target 19 aims to raise the generation, transfer and application of knowledge on biodiversity, the objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of Aichi Biodiversity Targets on the interdisciplinary research output, quality, and collaboration at the national scale regarding biodiversity and tourism. Methods The Hamiltonian Markov Chain Monter Carlo technique, incorporating the bibliometric analysis, was performed on 1176 documents extracted from the Web of Science database. Key results The current investigation revealed two prominent findings. First, the Aichi Biodiversity Targets positively affected scientific productivity, quality and international collaboration at the national level. Still, more than half of the countries on Earth (53.41%) had not acquired any interdisciplinary publication on the topic of biodiversity and tourism. Second, international collaboration was found to be an effective measure to improve scientific quality and quantity in both periods before and after the Aichi Targets. Although the impact of international collaboration on scientific output was similar between the two periods, its impact on scientific quality during 2011–2020 was lower than during 1991–2010. Conclusions Thus, we argue that international cooperation cannot be used as a ‘silver bullet’ strategy for advancing knowledge in the interdisciplinary field between biodiversity and tourism due to the trilemma between quantity, quality and cost. Implications We recommend policymakers, funding evaluators and researchers put culture into perspective to lessen the cost of interdisciplinary research.