Mapping the role of animal welfare in tourism: examining discourses in tourism research and beyond using a bibliometric co-occurrence analysis of author keywords

Abstract

ABSTRACT Animals are extensively used in the tourism industry to provide pleasurable tourist experiences, for instance in zoos, as working animals or in the wild. However, ample evidence shows that animals often suffer in these conditions, both physiologically and psychologically. Despite the growing popularity of animal-based tourism, some scholars caution that animal welfare receives insufficient attention from tourism research. Therefore, this study condenses knowledge on tourism and animal welfare from various research fields, e.g. social, veterinary, and environmental sciences, by conducting a bibliometric co-occurrence analysis on author keywords of 405 publications on articles (1994 to 2023). Findings indicate that animal welfare in the tourism scope is an interdisciplinary research topic, which has received limited attention from the tourism field. While research output has increased notably since 2020, discussions on tourism externalities impacting animal welfare are still led largely outside of tourism academia. Four main research streams are identified: (1) Wildlife conservation: benefits and challenges, (2) Anthropogenic impact and animal behavioral responses, (3) Visitor perspectives: Motivations, satisfaction, and human impacts, (4) Working animals: Fatalities and mortality. As the first systematic literature analysis on the subject, this study is cross-disciplinary and provides a valuable overview of the research object.