Trends and patterns in sustainable tourism research: a 25-year bibliometric analysis

Abstract

In the quarter of a century since the release of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainable tourism has emerged as the dominant paradigm in tourism development. However, the debate, discourse and criticism of this sub-field of tourism research continues. To address such concerns the purpose of this paper is to explore trends and patterns in sustainable tourism research over the past 25 years. A 25year bibliometric analysis was conducted for the four highest ranked journals in the tourism field.Results indicate that the growth in sustainable tourism research has been remarkable, with 492 papers published in these four journals and almost half of these in the last two years of the analysis. The largest proportion of papers published on sustainable tourism was case studies, empirical studies and critical reviews. This study found that while the theoretical and methodological approaches appear to have matured over time, the subjects and themes in sustainable tourism research, with some exceptions, have remained constant. However, the field is clearly maturing with a move away from definitional and conceptual papers to papers focused on testing and applying theory through empirical research.

Twenty-five years of sustainable tourism and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism: looking back and moving forward

“…The evolution of the subject is reflected in how it has been dealt with in later issues (Johnston, 2014;Lu & Nepal, 2009;Ruhanen, Weiler, Moyle, & McLennan, 2015). While views differ, several broad trends can be suggested.…”

Agriculture vs. social sciences: subject classification and sociological conceptualization of rural tourism in Scopus and Web of Science

“…These may involve problems caused by the use of different authoritynames and languages in either database so any analysis of this kind may entail some errors. The top four Scopus journals in Table 2 are the same as the journals identified by (Ruhanen et al, 2015). They also figure among the six leading journals identified in Scopus by Lane and Kastenholz (2015), and among many of the top journals identified by Pato and Teixeira (2016) as dedicated principally to the rural entrepreneurship as connected with tourism.…”

“…Tian et al (2011) classified general tourism research topics into 20 categories, including rural tourism. Ruhanen et al (2015) attempted at delimiting the more specialized topic of sustainable tourism by 16 contextual themes where rural tourism was also itemized. Crouch and Perdue (2015) employed classification system of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and detected growth in the importance of agricultural field in relation to tourism.…”

El valor de la sostenibilidad como factor de diferenciación en los procesos de intermediación turística: Un análisis para el caso de las PYMES catalanas

“…En este mismo sentido Clarke (1997) añadía la idea de que el turismo sostenible debía ser un concepto en permanente evolución y sugería el hecho de alcanzar determinados objetivos, que también podían ser revisados a medida que se fueran alcanzando. En relación a los enfoques, aunque el interés por el impacto medioambiental se ha mantenido constante, aspectos como el cambio climático adquirieron más importancia a inicios del siglo XXI mientras que la perspectiva más de oferta y especialmente la ligada a la planificación, la estrategia y en general el management ha sido también más prolífica que la relacionada con la demanda (Ruhanen, Weiler et al, 2015). Además, autores Buckley (2012) entienden que en los próximos años elementos como la influencia de la ética y la relación de la paz y la prosperidad con la sostenibilidad pueden ser temas emergentes.…”