Sport tourism collaboration: a systematic quantitative literature review

Abstract

ABSTRACT The development of sport tourism requires the collaborative engagement of sport, tourism, and other diverse sectors and stakeholders. Sport tourism collaboration has received much attention from academic scholars. This study conducted a systemic quantitative review of sport tourism collaboration. In total, 40 peer-reviewed academic manuscripts published in English-language journals between 1996 and February 2020 were considered, based on predefined criteria, and reviewed in order to address several research objectives. More precisely, this review was intended to systematically and quantitatively examine the bibliographic information, theoretical frameworks, research designs and methods, key issues, and the nature of the findings of the selected manuscripts. The study revealed that a wide range of less geographically diverse authors along with few field-dedicated scholars were engaged in publishing research outputs on sport tourism collaboration terrain in a substantial number of journals. The sampled studies were qualitative and conceptual research driven with limited use of theoretical frameworks. This study also found that most of the selected manuscripts focused on sport, sporting events, and sport tourism, along with mutual work and management-related concepts. Finally, future research directions are identified to address the research gaps. Notable future directions indicate additional quantitative and mixed methods research is necessary for bringing methodological diversity and advancing sport tourism collaboration scholarship with more generalised findings and cases. In addition, functional level sport tourism collaboration, design and implementation of strategy for sport tourism collaboration after COVID 19, and leadership processes of sport tourism collaboration need to be examined within established theories from various disciplines.