Abstract
Tourism and landscape are broad and complex scientific research fields, as is the synergy between them has given rise to a volume of articles diverse in nature, subject matter and methodology. These difficulties mean that, at present, there is no complete theoretical framework to support this tourism and landscape research, nor complete knowledge of its structure and organization. This motivates the present work, which constitutes the first attempt at mapping this research topic by applying bibliometric techniques using VOSviewer and Science Mapping Analysis Software Tool (SciMAT) software. A total of 3340 articles from journals indexed in Web of Science were analyzed. The results obtained confirm that interest in the study of these concepts has been growing, especially in the last decade. The main contribution of this work lies in the identification of work themes that were basic to the construction of the field but that are currently in decline, such as “cultural heritage” and other themes important to the field that should continue to be dealt with, such as “national parks” or “geotourism”. The transversal nature of sustainability that appears in the network of keywords related to currently emerging themes, such as “planning” and “environment”, is also highlighted and reinforced.
Highlights
The term “landscape” was originally conceived as a geographical concept, it is a holistic concept that is considered in different disciplines, including sociology, psychology, ethnology, landscape ecology and philosophy of nature [1]
To mention just a few examples, we find work from the point of view of rural tourism, in combination with agriculture and local development [8], gastronomic tourism [29], potential tourism in protected landscape areas [30], tourism in relation to reforestation [31], the relationship between wind farms and tourism [32], nuclear landscape and tourism [33], the management of beaches to guarantee sustainable tourism [34] or the analysis of indigenous culture concerning the promotion of landscape tourism [35]
The two objectives pursued in this work have been achieved, and the main contributions can be summarized as follows: First, the subject of landscape and tourism has been analyzed by a large number of authors, but there are few groups that specialize in this field (87% of the authors have only published one article on this subject)
Summary
The term “landscape” was originally conceived as a geographical concept, it is a holistic concept that is considered in different disciplines, including sociology, psychology, ethnology, landscape ecology and philosophy of nature [1]. The term landscape usually implies the holistic interrelation of human beings with a natural and physical environment [3,4]; this is clear in its systematization, where natural features are considered first, socio-economic and technical features and, marginally, non-material aspects such as cultural and esthetic features [2]. In this way, many researchers define a landscape as the product of the actions and practices of humans who constantly make and remake the world around them, building a place within it that they can call home [5]. From all of these definitions, a landscape is the result of the interaction between human beings and nature, which converts the landscape into a diversity of visual, cultural and ecological constructions [7]
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