Abstract
This study evaluates bibliometric analysis of sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm, depicts emerging themes, and offers critical discussion for theory development and further research. Through the use of bibliometrix, this paper investigates the amount of studies conducted in this area and verifies if such studies have represented a contribution to the evolving research in the field of sustainable tourism. Specifically, the paper identifies whether and to what extent scholars have explored these interconnections and maps to get to a conceptual structure of the field under investigation. The results identify the development status and the leading trends in terms of impact, main journals, papers, topics, authors, and countries. The analysis and the graphical presentations are crucial, as they can help both researchers and practitioners to better understand the state of the art of sustainable tourism in the experiential and digital era.
Highlights
This study is intended to fill a gap in the range of bibliometric studies on sustainable tourism produced to date, which have been concentrated in only a few publications, and, for the most part, have approached the issue in a general manner
[1] used the articles published in a single specialized journal (Journal of Sustainable Tourism) over a period of 15 years for their analysis; [2] carried out a longitudinal analysis of 492 papers published in the four journals of the greatest impact in the field of tourism; and [3] focused on sustainable tourism in sensitive areas, in a first attempt to provide understanding of the accumulated knowledge of the sub-theme by looking at research presented by impact publications
This is, for example, the case of sustainable transportation enclosed within the framework of travel chains in order to create a sustainable tourism product according to a holistic way [64,65,66,67]
Summary
Tourism has experienced continuous expansion and differentiation that has turned it into one of the economic sectors with greater weight and growth in the world.In light of the proliferation of literature on the theme under investigation, it appears appropriate to carry out a bibliographical review, based on empirical bibliometric data, in order to find out who are the leading research pioneers interested in studying the theme of sustainable tourism, to discover gaps in our understanding, and redefine new concepts’ frontiers.In particular, this study is intended to fill a gap in the range of bibliometric studies on sustainable tourism produced to date, which have been concentrated in only a few publications, and, for the most part, have approached the issue in a general manner.In recent decades, growth of the scientific production on the subject has been recorded, and its collection in bibliographic databases has, most insistently, led to the use of “bibliometrics” as a useful tool to measure scientific activity based on the statistical analysis of quantitative data provided by scientific literature.On one side, a large bibliometric production already exists on the topic of sustainable tourism. In light of the proliferation of literature on the theme under investigation, it appears appropriate to carry out a bibliographical review, based on empirical bibliometric data, in order to find out who are the leading research pioneers interested in studying the theme of sustainable tourism, to discover gaps in our understanding, and redefine new concepts’ frontiers. Growth of the scientific production on the subject has been recorded, and its collection in bibliographic databases has, most insistently, led to the use of “bibliometrics” as a useful tool to measure scientific activity based on the statistical analysis of quantitative data provided by scientific literature. [1] used the articles published in a single specialized journal (Journal of Sustainable Tourism) over a period of 15 years for their analysis; [2] carried out a longitudinal analysis of 492 papers published in the four journals of the greatest impact in the field of tourism; and [3] focused on sustainable tourism in sensitive areas, in a first attempt to provide understanding of the accumulated knowledge of the sub-theme by looking at research presented by impact publications
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