research paper about tourism development

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Sustainable tourism development and competitiveness: The systematic literature review

Dalia streimikiene.

1 Institute for Sport Science and Innovation, Lithuanian Sports University, Kaunas Lithuania

Biruta Svagzdiene

2 Department of Sport and Tourism Management, Lithuanian Sports University, Kaunas Lithuania

Edmundas Jasinskas

Arturas simanavicius.

Tourism is one of most perspective and dynamic businesses in the world. It is of great significance to plan and develop tourism purposefully and sustainably though the search for compromises between environmental, economic and social aims of society. The sustainable tourism development management has to retain high satisfaction degree of tourists' needs, assure significant experience for consumers, increasing their consciousness under issues of sustainability, and propagating practices of sustainable tourism among them. The significance of sustainable tourism sector development ambition is analysed in this paper through the lens of strengthening its competitiveness. The paper analyses scientific literature and seeks to discover the main forms and factors for the strengthening of the tourism competitiveness by implementing economic, social and environmental targets of tourism destination territories development. The broad systematic literature review provided for some interesting findings: The business participants are interested in the implementation of new technologies in tourism services having positive impact on environment and local communities; however, a lot of challenges exist how to change environment, increase of consumers' motivations for sustainable tourism services and to change their behaviour towards more sustainable one. The current Covid 19 outbreak and high risks of future pandemics have risen new challenges for sustainable tourism development. In this paper the main sustainable tourist development challenges are addressed and new insights for the strengthening of competitiveness of sustainable tourism destination are provided. The future research guidelines are set based on analysis performed.

• The systematic review of literature on sustainable tourism
• The trade‐off between sustainability and competitiveness
• The main challenges of sustainable tourist development
• New insights for the strengthening of competitiveness of sustainable tourism
• The future research guidelines are set based on analysis performed

1. INTRODUCTION

Travels have already become an inseparable part of human lives. Neither global world problems nor the terrorism threat cannot defeat a passion to travel. In the year 2019, in the world there travelled about 1.4 billion of the planet population (UNWTO, 2019 ). However, tourism as any other economic field not does only bring some economic benefits to states, but it also creates some serious problems as excessive energy consumption and increasing negative environmental effects including climatic change. Also due to tourism and travel expansions the nature is being wasted, tourist destinations suffer from high tourist flows and the life quality of the local people is also negatively affected. In order to decrease negative tourism effects, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) announced the year 2017 – the year of sustainable tourism and invited all world population to travel, following the principles of sustainable tourism and to turn to local communities (UNWTO, 2017 ).

The topicality of the research is related to the fact that many scientists have noticed the great challenges for sustainable tourism due to rapid growth of tourism services; however, at the moment there is a lack in sustainability as a such rapid growth has impact on unsustainable solutions in tourism sector. In this paper the key challenges of sustainable tourism development are addressed and some ideas about possible consolidation of the competitiveness in a tourism sector and sustainable development of tourism destinations are given. The research is based on systematic literature review to assess the current degree of research and to deliver guideline for further research in sustainable tourism field. The sustainable tourism issues were researched by UNWTO ( 2017 ), UNWTO ( 2014 ); Lu and Nepal ( 2009 ); Alvarez and Cooper ( 2014 ); Waseema ( 2017 ); Pjerotic, Delibasic, Joksiene, Griesiene, and Georgeta ( 2017 ); Pjerotic ( 2017 ). Coenen and Truffer ( 2012 ); Butler ( 1999 ); Mihalič, Šegota, Knežević Cvelbar, and Kuščer ( 2016 ); Waligo, Clarke, and Hawkins ( 2013 ); Kangwa (2017); Streimikiene, & Bilan, 2015); Agyeiwaah, McKercher, and Suntikul ( 2017 ) etc. The linkages between tourism and sustainable development of tourist destinations were also addressed in various studies (Egresi & Kara, 2018 ; Jeon et al., 2016 ; Madhavan & Rastogi, 2013 ; Nunkoo & So, 2016 ; Pesonen & Komppula, 2010 ; Woo, Kim, & Uysal, 2015 ). The competitiveness issues in tourism development were concentrated in several important studies by Crouch and Ritchie ( 1999 ); Hassan ( 2000 ); Mihalič ( 2000 ); Croes and Kubickova ( 2013 ).

Despite plenty of research in this area, sustainable development of tourism is a dynamic process that is constantly experiencing new challenges as there are changing the applied technologies and consumption aspects of tourism. The scientific problem: what are the current prospects of sustainable tourism in consolidation with the competitiveness of a tourism sector? The main goal of this paper is based on literature review to indicate the prospects of consolidation of sustainability and competitiveness in tourism development by taking into account the recent trends of development.

The rest of the paper of structured in the following way: Section 2 deals with the concept of sustainable tourism and addresses the main challenges of sustainable tourism and the main issues of competitiveness; Section 3 provides sustainable tourism development prospects by consolidating the issues competitiveness of tourism industries and sustainable development priorities of tourism destinations; Section 4 concludes and provides policy implications.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. sustainable tourism.

Sustainable development is the main concept of development and tourism has enormous economic, environmental and social impact in the modern world therefore the development of this sector is linked with all three mentioned dimensions of sustainability. As global economy, social and technological development processes are still expanding, the analysis of new and specific forms, present in business is necessary in tourism as well in order to achieve sustainable development of tourism. One of them involves the clusters, gaining a greater significance – to locate in one network geographical companies and establishments that closely cooperate and that are focused on mutual business results and ones that complement each other. The innovations are expected to contribute to breakthroughs at the international level and that may determine companies' operation under new effective organizational forms that generalize ideas, provide with some competitive advantage and open new possibilities in tourism as well (Agyeiwaah et al., 2017 ). Therefore, sustainable tourism development issues are closely linked with competitiveness through increasing innovations in all areas relevant to business operations. In addition, tourism is described as a business, distinguishing by its great variety, integrity and multi‐planning. Precisely, great interconnection of structural components, shaping tourism business, allow presumptions for the companies, providing tourism service, to cooperate in the implementation of innovations (Madhavan & Rastogi, 2013 ).

Tourism has been acknowledged as one of the most significant economic sectors in major countries of the worlds. According to World Travel and Tourism Council ( 2020 ) in 2018, the Travel & Tourism sector experienced 3.9% growth, outpacing that of the global economy (3.2%) for the eighth consecutive year. Over the past 5 years, one in five jobs were created by the sector, making Travel & Tourism the best partner for governments to generate employment. Therefore, tourism as one of the world's largest economic sectors, supporting one in 10 jobs (319 million) worldwide, and generating 10.4% of global GDP. Although tourism market is dependent on the health and natural environment; however, simultaneously it often affects them negatively. Therefore, environmental issues of tourism development require special attention and were addressed by several important studies (Butler, 1999 ; Lu, & Nepal, 2009; Pjerotic et al., 2017 ; Waligo et al, 2013).

The term of green tourism is mainly linked tourism addressing environmental issues of tourism (Lu et al. (2009). The research of the year 2018 disclosed that tourism contributes to the amount of the emission of the carbon dioxide in the world by 8% (Lenzen et al., 2018 ). Thus, the significance of the sustainable tourism is currently of the greatest importance. As a result, several future guidelines for developed for sustainable tourism providing main environmental indicators for tourism sector including climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, use of renewables, waste disposal etc. (UNEP, 2004 ; UNWTO, 2013 , 2014 , 2017 ). As was already mentioned before, innovations, research and technological development can provide significant solutions for dealing with environmental challenges of tourism development. The European Economy is recovering after the Great Crisis however there are new challenges liked to the threats of world pandemic. In the presence of such a situation, the pace of technological development has been slowed and as a result there is a harm not only for economy, but also for nature as further steps towards utilisation of renewables are lacking. The use of renewables has direct impact on climate change mitigation. The outcomes of the previous economic crisis are still being felt around the world, and as the growth of other countries' economies slowed; the European economy has just few chances to turn into a powerful economic force. Investment into technological development is being observed as well as focus on social issues of sustainability. It is also significant to mention that in case of improving life quality – tourism is playing important role. The quality of life is one of the most important targets of sustainable development also relevant to tourism sector in terms of providing services for tourist as well as taking into account quality of life of residents in tourist destinations (Crouch, & Ritchie, 1999; Hassan, 2000 ; Jeon et al., 2016 ). Generalizing the expressed statements, the presumptions can be created, for finding the ways to maximize the quality of life in the future and accordingly to avoid a new economic crisis around the world (Kakoudakis, McCabe, & Story, 2017 ; Morgan, Pritchard, & Sedgley, 2015 ).

According to Agyeiwaah (Madhavan & Rastogi, 2013 ), even though there have been created unbelievably many indicators, following which, it would be possible to identify the advance of sustainable development in the tourism sector; however, principally it turned out that the following does not work. The authors (Agyeiwaah et al., 2017 ; Coenen & Truffer, 2012 ; Fayos‐Solà et al., 2014 ; Jasinskas & Simanavičienė, 2009 ; Kangwa, 2017 ; Macdonald & Jolliffe, 2003 ; Mihalič et al., 2016 ; Pjerotic, 2017 ; Pjerotic et al., 2017 ; Waligo, 2013; Waseema, 2017 ; Smagurauskienė, 2009 ; Streimikiene & Bilan, 2015 ) are trying to answer the question if different theories, calculations and other mechanisms of sustainable development assure more successful and sustainable development of tourism sector or to find more simple ways to achieve sustainability in tourism. There are distinguished seven key indicators (UNWTO, 2014 ), following which, it is possible to measure sustainability issues in tourism: creation of workplaces, business vitality, quality of life and water, sorting of waste, energy saving and community spirit. A way to a more sustainable tourism sector consists of many small steps; however, the most important is consistency. Strengthening of sustainability in any sector is a continuous process; thus, it would not be purposeful to limit the following process by the certain aspects, and it might be even hazardous.

The first step seeking sustainability in tourism business is the identification of problems. One of the most painful problems in tourism are: non‐traditional kinds of tourism, sorting of waste and seasoning (Murava & Korobeinykova, 2016 ). Having identified problems – it is necessary to prepare a plan of the key measures and a strategy. Having commenced the implementation of the actions and having gained positive activity outcomes, the next stage for the strengthening of the sustainable tourism are extra actions, which would assure the stability of the achieved result.

Analysing scientific literature, the following key aspects of sustainable tourism development can be defined: creation of new workplaces including employment opportunities in tourism destinations, preservation of natural environment, climate change mitigation, pollution and waste reduction, promotion of green and sustainable consumption practices (UNEP, 2004 ; UNEP, 2005; UNWTO, 2013 , 2014 , 2017 ). These effects manifests through other social factors, such as resident employment and unemployment, psychological climate, availability of social service in tourist destinations etc. Currently, in the tourism sector, it is particularly underlying to ensure socially responsible tourism or sustainable tourism in order to sort waste, preserve natural resources and other issues of ethical tourism (Andereck & Nyaupane, 2011 ; Andereck, Valentine, Knopf, & Vogt, 2005 ; Andereck, Valentine, Vogt, & Knopf, 2007 ; Luekveerawattana, 2018 ; Morgan et al., 2015 ; Murava & Korobeinykova, 2016 ).

Currently, the social issues of tourism development attract a lot of attention of scientists. The term of social tourism was developed to address concerns about socially disadvantaged people (Kakoudakis et al., 2017 ; Morgan et al., 2015 ). Kakoudakis et al. (2003) analysed the impact of social tourism economically and how this manifest for the quality of life in terms of socially disadvantaged people. In the presence of the impact of such psychological environment, it is significant to pay attention to the fact how the unemployed seek to find a desirable job and how vacations affect employees. It was determined that in the presence of better psychological environment there is much stronger residents' health condition and in such a case there are reduced expenses for the disease treatment, improve interpersonal relationship and decreases the level of crimes. It is considered that social tourism – an alternative form of tourism, providing a possibility to travel for the people, possessing fewer possibilities. Different associations created in parallel: movements for family, trade unions, federations, etc., the key aim of which is to develop social tourism (Morgan et al., 2015 ). Social tourism is very well developed in Europe and it provides service to thousands of people. Tourism is also one of social integrity measures. Universal right to tourism is based on the criteria of values, which shape the development basis of social tourism (Ozdemir & Yolal, 2017 ). The number of people, who can enjoy vacation today, has significantly increased due to the boosting popularity of tourism in the world. However, there are still present groups of people, to whom vacations are unavailable due to different reasons: a lack of resources, manifestation of social exclusion, insufficient attention of the public sector, applying social resources and the actions of passive communities and non‐profit making organizations.

Tourism is a contribution into social integrity, the activities of which can be perceived as a measure of social integration/integrity that enables the establishment of relations with other cultures, cognitions of places, customs, and conduct of cultural exchange and pithy spending of spare time (Cloquet, Palomino, Shaw, Stephen, & Taylor, 2017 ; Ganglmair‐Wooliscroft & Wooliscroft, 2017 ; Ozdemir & Yolal, 2017 ; Ponnapureddy, Priskin, Ohnmacht, Vinzenz, & Wirth, 2017 ). Social tourism, more based on social than on economical presumptions, may aid at the creation or preservation of tourist destinations, taking into consideration economic, social and environmental criteria of sustainability. It is a significant contribution to the employment and the growth of economy. In the development of tourism activities, it is necessary to base not only on economic profit‐seeking criteria, but also on ones of the social welfare increase, which are as following ‐ stable and high‐quality creation of workplaces, solution of seasoning and employment problems, cooperation of public and private partnership. Essentially, it can be stated that even short vacation provided for the job search motivate particularly positively for a job search and provide with some essence in terms of the creation of welfare. Thus, social sensitivity together with economic welfare is one of the most significant elements of sustainable development not only in the sector of tourism, but also in the other ones.

Though sustainable tourism issues are mainly linked with promotion of green and social tourism there are important issues of competitiveness necessary to address as competitiveness is perceived as one of the main economic dimensions of sustainability also relevant to tourism sector. The main problem identified based on systematic sustainable tourism research review is about finding possibilities to achieve all three sustainability dimensions (economic, social and environmental) together, that is, to develop competitive tourism business by addressing environmental and social challenges of tourism development in holistic way. The systematic review of literature of competitiveness issues of tourism might provide relevant answers how to trade‐ off between social, economic and environmental dimension of sustainable tourism development.

2.2. Competitiveness and sustainability issues in tourism

According to study (UNWTO, 2017 ), modern economy is distinguished by high competitiveness in any business field including tourism. In order to survive, organizations are forced to increase business efficiency, implement the most advanced technologies, to seek for the competitive advantage of products and supplied service, to fight for the greater market share and to retain the best specialists. The author (Smagurauskienė, 2009 ) emphasizes that operating in such conditions, organizational management necessarily faces a problem, when further development is impossible with no attraction of investment resources. Investment provides an organization with extra competitive advantage and a powerful measure for growth. Following Smagurauskienė ( 2009 ), all the EU and major world states support business development in one or another form, paying great attention to small and medium business of the country that as it is thought forms an economic basis and secures its stability. Financial support for the certain size companies is the key policy instrument of small and medium business.

It was determined that small and medium enterprises are an economic engine in the EU. They form the greatest part of economy and create high income. However, in Lithuania the potential of small and medium enterprises is not completely exploited due to a very unfavourable situation in terms of business, assessing it under a complex approach. The greatest potential of small and medium business is related to the young generation that is focused on the creation of business consciously and purposefully (Macdonald & Jolliffe, 2003 ).

According to Jasinskas and Simanavičienė ( 2009 ), the three key aspects, verifying the provision of financial support to SMEs are distinguished: decision, rationality and human motivation:

• Aspects of dependence on the decisions, made by other foreign states. The authors describe such an aspect as a situation, when one state, making economic decisions, affects the decision‐making of another country.
• Rationality aspect. It is known that support from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), makes 75% of the all the provided amount of the support. Thus, following this indicator, under the authors' approach, it would be unreasonable to reject it and not to exploit it, as in another case “financial injections” could come to other states.
• Human motivation presumption aspect. Plenty of citizens would lose trust in state authorities if before declaring a willing to enter the EU, they had spoken about the advantages of the EU support, and having implemented that, it did not supply it to business.

Having taken into consideration these three discussed aspects, the presumption can be made, that financial support should not be rejected in order to establish own business or seeking for relevant initial funding. It is required to search for and select the most relevant form of financial support from possible ones. According to Smagurauskienė ( 2009 ), there are two key categories of financial support: “State to business” and “Business to business” (not trying to analyse what business gives to the state in such a case) (See Figure ​ Figure1 1 ).

The key categories of financial support [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com ]

Following Figure ​ Figure1 1 it can be seen that both the state and business take part in the distribution of the financial support. It is significant to distinguish and comprehend that the state role remains an important one as without the support provided by the state; the realization of ideas and establishment of SMEs would not be possible in some cases. Meanwhile, it should be reasoned that without business that is one of the most significant moments of the economic added value, there would be no state. The more business ideas are being implemented; the greater economic growth of the country is being observed. Considering financial support to business, it can be imagined that a businessperson, having invested into the industry of tourism business and provided he/she has established a new hotel, supplies additional work, for example, to a local laundry. Following the example, it can be emphasized that every newly established business creates quite a great added value to another enterprise, supplying another service or product, therefore the financial support to business can be acknowledged. However, taking into account the laws of market and efficiency of resource allocation provided by markets state interventions into the markets should be limited by dealing with market failures such as pollution, public goods and internalization of external and internal costs linked to business operations. Therefore, state support for sustainable tourism should be linked to promotion of innovations, use of renewables, provision of social integrity for disabled people, creation of new job places and other benefits for quality of life of local population which are being treated as public benefits (Streimikiene & Bilan, 2015 ).

In addition, it is necessary to stress that sustainable tourism development is closely linked to payment attention to a consumer as this allows to attract more consumers, expand business and increase competitiveness (Luekveerawattana, 2018 ). Tourism business organizations invest quite a lot in consumer market research and are interested in their consumer behaviour and motives. In scientific literature, it is mentioned that not only does motivation, life style or demographic parameters affect tourist behaviour, but also do the nationality and country's culture (Andereck et al., 2005 , 2007 ; Andereck & Nyaupane, 2011 ; Morgan et al., 2015 ). Tourism business is expanding quite at a high pace, more tourists of different nationalities and cultures are emerging and the following fosters greater interest in cultural differences, cognition of local traditions and habits. Tourism service suppliers, knowing intercultural differences and cognizing tourist behaviour, apply this knowledge for the creation of tourist service packages and consider the following while forming tourist groups. This will enable to fulfil consumers' expectations and create more favourable environment both in groups and in individual service. The result of that is felt – gained a greater everything involving added value for consumers and organizations (Ozdemir & Yolal, 2017 ).

Looking deeper into the market research areas that are being paid more and more attention under the aspect of sustainable consumption, there is present comprehension and cognition of tourists' consumption significance (See Figure ​ Figure2 2 ).

The impact of tourism on environment and economy and on society [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com ]

Following Figure ​ Figure2, 2 , it can be seen that tourism is business, the impact of that is made on environment and economy and on society. Analysing the research and the presented outcomes by Ganglmair‐Wooliscroft and Wooliscroft ( 2017 ), it can be noticed that although the society is being more and more responsible in terms of consumption; however, the selection of sustainable tourism service remains relatively low. The results disclosed by these scientists also showed that there is strong dependence/correlation between consumer's daily consumption habits and behaviour during holidays. Generalizing there can be drawn a presumption that in daily activities, society follows the principles of sustainable consumption and it will apply the same principles during holidays.

There is wide penetrated of sustainable consumption aspect of sustainable tourism. The tourists, who are for sustainable and responsible consumption, usually do not select sustainable tourism service packages that are proposed by Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO). According to Ponnapureddy et al. ( 2017 ), that can be explained as distrust in the organization, proposing that service. Some organizations, willing to attract more tourists, convey themselves as more sustainable than in reality they are. A contemporary tourism service consumer is a sophisticated service consumer and the following sets some ambiguities and distrust in an organization. Under the basis of research results, made by these scientists it was proved that trust in an organization directly impacts tourism service consumer's intentions to order the certain service. The research results have disclosed that higher trust is set for tourists by the hotel advertising that provides with clear and useful information, at the same time reflects sustainability, and does not overshadow with some exceeded information through very obsessive emphasis (Ganglmair‐Wooliscroft & Wooliscroft, 2017 ). That is a very significant highlight talking about a tourism service consumer and analysing his/her decision motives to purchase service.

Sustainable tourism is not only the nature preservation or socially responsible business. It is necessary to remind that the theoretical definition of sustainable tourism involves economic, social and environmental protection dimensions. In that context there is noticed that the issue that receives less attention is social involvement. The following can be noticed analysing the communication among organizations and potential tourism service consumers and especially among those, who are disabled in one or another way. According to Cloquet et al. ( 2017 ), tourism‐advertising measures are not focused on disabled tourists no relevant information in commercials/films are delivered for them, disabled persons are not shown and the following creates the feeling of no involvement. Following the research, it was determined that advertising that a consumer can identify himself/herself with, also increases the feeling of involvement, also increases probability, and in that way strengthens motivation that a consumer will gain the proposed product or separate tourism service or service package. Thus, strengthening the remarks, determined by the research results, it can be stated that tourism organizations, expanding the development of sustainable tourism, should pay a greater attention to the involvement of the disabled tourism service consumers (Benur & Bramwell, 2015 ).

Therefore, then main competitiveness issues in tourism can be addressed also by achieving social and environmental targets of sustainable tourism development by developing innovations linked to sustainable consumption practices in tourism services and attracting environmentally conscious consumers and training such type of consumers by provision of green or environmentally friendly tourism services. Another important input to competitiveness of tourism is innovating in social area and providing social tourism services for disabled and old people. At the same time green and social tourism can deliver a lot of benefits to local communities of tourism destinations by increasing the quality of life etc. Therefore, based on systematic literature review, the main directions of consolidation of competitiveness and sustainable tourism development prospects are analysed further in Section 3 .

3. THE CONSOLIDATION OF COMPETITIVENESS AND SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES IN TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

For consolidating competitiveness and sustainability issues in tourism the analysis of tourism services and products and customer's needs is necessary especially taking into account current demographic trends around the world as following the statistics, the major part of tourists are at the age of 30–50 or over 65 and it can be foreseen that the number of tourists is going to increase every year and most of them will be at the age over 65 therefore in order to ensure competitiveness of this sector development the tourism services and products necessary to satisfy future tourists needs should be reconsidered as well.

3.1. Implications of aging society on tourism development trends

The aging process started more than 100 years ago in many developed countries and during XX and XXI centuries, it turned out that in many developing. Resident aging will soon turn into one of the most significant social transformations in the 21st century that will affect almost all social sectors, including labour and finance markets, products and services, transport and social needs as well as family structure and relationship of different generations. Following statistic data, almost in every country there is present a part of people older than 60 years that is growing faster than one of any other group. Especially this trend is fast in European Union and creates many important challenges. The following discloses that soon the number of the people at 65 and older will double in accordance with the world resident part. In accordance with numbers, it can be stated that the number of people at the age 60+ will double until 2050 in comparison to the year 2016. Most elderly will be present in Japan and developed countries. Such rapid increase in the number of the elderly changes all stages of life. The following reveals that the birth rate is decreasing globally (UN, 2020 ). UN ( 2020 ). This indicates that there predominant the elderly in the world. It cannot be stated that the elderly has emerged suddenly and in an unplanned way. They pass several stages through their life until they reach the last one ‐ eldership. The comprehension of the world and activities expands in the process of human development. In each stage of development, we choose new alternatives that will provide us with some possibilities for the achievement of a normal level in life. The following is determined by the person's biological age, historical circumstances, under which the personality was forming, his/her economic and family status, and cultural factors (Peterson & Martin, 2015 ).

Human aging is determined by many factors that affect a human from both environment and from inside. Each factor has positive and negative sides (Batini, 2015 ; Flatt, 2012 ; Itrat, Nigar, & Huque, 2013 ; Katz & Calasanti, 2015 ; Lee, Lan, & Yen, 2011 ; Liang & Luo, 2012 ; Nikitina & Vorontsova, 2015 ; Sedgley, Pritchard, & Morgan, 2011 ; Villar, 2012 ). Aging – a very wide concept, involving different fields of life: physiological (medical), psychological and many others. According to Itrat et al. ( 2013 ), aging is a gradual and progressive process and in general a disorder of functions, when it is adapted to stress and the increased disease risk. However, according to Flatt ( 2012 ), the aging – stabilizing and adapting of powers, based on natural selection, to the changed environment. There are more broad concepts like ‐ process, during which, the number of the elderly are increasing in the general society. Therefore, there is no one term to describe the concept of aging. However, there can be made a conclusion that aging affects the whole human organism (both inside and appearance) and that is an irreversible process. All‐natural creatures age and this is natural for nature. Human is also a natural creature; thus, the same conditions work for him/her. There are several social indicators, describing aging ‐ the number of the residents at the older age; residents' senility degree; the indicator of the doubled period for the resident senility degree; senility demographic coefficient; resident median age; average resident life expectancy, so called resident pyramid; gender coefficient (gender correlation – the number of all men resident in the country divided from the women in the country); different coefficients of dependence and the coefficient of supported parents (supportive age people) (Mendes de Leon, 2005 ; Noll, 2002 , 2005 ).

According to the United Nations Organization (UNO), human is assigned to the aging society after having got 60 and according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – after 65. Currently, people at the age of 65 and senior make 8–10%. Their number exceeds the number of children under 5 (Figure ​ (Figure3 3 ).

Number of people at the age of 65 and senior and children under 5 [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com ]

In accordance with the Figure ​ Figure3 3 it can be seen that the child birth rate started decreasing from 1970s and in the same year, the number of the elderly increased. Following the presented data, it can be seen that until 2050, there will be by 10% more people at the older age than children, younger than 5. It is obvious that aging is a “problem” that affects everybody's life, including social, cultural and religious. Undoubtedly, gradual resident aging is one of challenges that the society is facing in this century (Batini, 2015 ; Flatt, 2012 ; Itrat et al., 2013 ; Nikitina & Vorontsova, 2015 ; Sedgley et al., 2011 ).

During several upcoming years or even decades, there is intended a rapid world resident aging, as result of that the part of the population of the working age will be significantly decreasing. Longer lifespan is a great winning in the field of health as a person can enjoy a good quality of life longer and remain employable longer. However, due to the resident aging there appear quite many economic and social problems. Demographic changes are considered one of the greatest difficulties, emerged for the European Union and the whole world. According to UN data (UN, 2020 ), the number of the elderly at the age of 65 and older will increase by 16% in terms of the resident part until 2050. In the world, there will be present more older people than children (0–14 years old). This will happen for the first time through the history of mankind. Such a dramatic change in age is already affecting the world economy and, in the time, it will be more and more obvious. In the case of the elderly number increase, there are put efforts to make their lifespan longer. A lot of attention is paid to health care and physical activity. If the elderly remains healthy longer, they will be able to enjoy the better quality of life, be independent and active.

Seniors – is non‐homogenous group of persons, the members of which have different needs, different motivation and different expectations. Seniors experience a greater social isolation and the tourism adapted to the elderly aids them to restore social relations. It has been proved that the tourism, adapted to the elderly, aids at the reduction of a health care need. Travelling, they widen their attitude and communicate with alter ego. Sedgley et al. ( 2011 ) presents the groups of the elderly, who travel, considering their approach and wishes. Such travellers can be grouped in groups as passive visitors, enthusiasts, culture hounds, active learners, careful participants, ordinary holidaymakers, world investigators, independent adventure seekers and restless travellers. All these groups of people look for the service, present in the tourism industry that they need in order to fulfil their wishes (Table ​ (Table1 1 ).

Model of the elderly behaviour in the tourism sector

Source: Completed following Nikitina and Vorontsova ( 2015 ).

According to the Table ​ Table1, 1 , we can see that it is complicated to implement the elderly needs, as it is a diverse system and it cannot be named as “the cheapest product”. Considering the elderly income, health condition and employment, their needs become individual. Applying the presented model, the elderly consumer needs enable the increase of the tourism supply effectiveness for this group of tourists. Having found of senior needs, there arises a possibility to propose a relevant tourism product for them, what they expect or demand, that is, that it complied with the value and their needs.

In order to implement needs of seniors, a search for innovative solutions is necessary. According to Van Vuuren and Slabbet ( 2011 ), there are key travellers' factors, determining their behaviour during travels. The most significant is the travel aim; the type of travel (cultural travels, business meetings, holidays, etc.). Taking into account these factors, it is possible to ensure the quality of tourism product and service, to attract more customers and increase competitiveness.

Due to the fact that motives and needs are individual, the tourism market can be segmented in order to find and present the best result easier and more simply (Figure ​ (Figure4 4 ).

Segmentation of tourism market [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com ]

In Figure ​ Figure4, 4 , we can see that the tourism market is divided into geographical, psychographic and consumer behaviour. This figure enables the highlight of age, as it is one of the most significant criteria of the segment. According to the categories, the age can be divided into children, teenagers, youth, middle‐aged and the retired (seniors). From all people's categories, the elderly most frequently has a command of free time. The most relevant place for the elderly activities, complying with their abilities and needs is their usual place of residence. A lot of depends in the person and his/her ability to find some activities for himself/herself. The elderly stays most frequently alone and are condemned to loneliness (Murava & Korobeinykova, 2016 ).

Talking about leisure, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the forms and ways of spending leisure is determined by a complex and closely interacted blend of different factors. However, the selection of the certain leisure activities and participation in it highly depends on the person and in particular on his/her age, gender and education (Araña, León, Carballo, & Moreno‐Gi, 2015 ; Dhiman, 2013 ; Liu, Yang, & Pu, 2015 ; Ok Luy & Lee, 2015 ). There are many ways of leisure spending, relevant to the people of different age and different character (Delespaul, Reis, & DeVries, 2004 ; Lanzendorf, 2002 ; Mokhtarian, Salomon, & Handy, 2004 ; Schlich, Schonfelder, Hanson, & Axhausen, 2004 ; Tschan, Semmer, & Inversin, 2004 ). As it was mentioned earlier, the most popular way of leisure spending among the elderly is travels and physical activity. Many other elements complement these two fields. They are as following: transport, accommodation, catering, attractions, etc. Travels turn to be one of the primary leisure spending ways for the elderly. It does not matter if they travel in their country, their city or beyond the boundaries of their homeland. Such a way of time spending turns into the seniors' basis of physical activity.

Both travels and physical activity may be divided into forms, that is, places where all the presented activities may be taken. Seniors most frequently select such destinations, where there is calmness, silence and little noise. They find these things in a natural environment and in holiday and amusement parks. Therefore, the Seniors are a target market in the tourism business. Every year the number of seniors is increasing annually and at the same time there is increasing a number of travels and the following reveals that they are more and more willing to change their residential environment, experience and feel something new (Cerina, Markandya, & McAller, 2011 ). However, not all seniors are able and can implement their travel aims. There are quite many reasons disturbing that, for example, finance, health problems, etc. All reasons are solved invoking the certain ways of solutions. Many seniors cannot go abroad and they select travels in their country or even city. It is not necessary to go far away in order to see something new. It is sometimes to discover what we have never seen in the environment surrounding us. Those seniors are using this principle, who are not willing to go far away from their home.

Other seniors – have set some aims and motives for themselves concerning travels. They are trying to implement that through the application to tourism agencies or planning their trips on their own. Such a type of seniors, wants to get everything from a trip what is possible: nature and culture, sports and leisure, trial of new entertainment, discovery of new places, etc. Their motives and aims are individual (Carey, Kang, & Zea, 2012 ; Kim & Yoon, 2012 ; Westcott, 2012 ). It is not that easy to make a trip in accordance with their requests; thus, many seniors plan their trips themselves. Some of them pay attention to their hobbies (communication and finding of friends, search for romance, interest in historical places and events, etc.); rest and calmness is significant for ones and religion, safety and health is significant for others (Jang & Wu, 2006 ; Losada, Alén, Domínguez, & Nicolau, 2016 ; Moal‐Ulvoas, 2017 ; Patterson et al., 2018). Therefore, taking into account the trends of ageing population, especially in developed world countries, the main issues of competitiveness of sustainable tourism development are linked with innovations in providing tourism services for seniors and disabled people at the same time addressing social tourism challenges.

3.2. Sustainable dev e lopment of tourism destinations

Tourism has become the main economic business field and survival possibility for many countries. Therefore, the competitiveness issues of tourism are closely linked with addressing sustainable development targets of tourist destinations and providing green tourism services which do not have negative impact on environment, ensure resources savings, protection of natural environment and is based on innovations in green services development, In case of the tourist flow increase, there are being established new companies that supply accommodation catering, transportation, entertainment or other services that they travellers need. Žilinskas ( 2011 ) states that “strengthening public economic and cultural integration determine the development of regional tourism that unavoidably is related to the impact on the economy, socio‐cultural environment and nature.” “Due to the increasing tourism demand, municipalities foster tourism, expecting to receive income from tourism, to create new workplaces and encourage the development of business service.”

However, in order to develop business, it is necessary to master the principles of tourism management and implement innovations in this field as well. Paulauskienė ( 2013 ) notices that “tourism management is a complicated process – it is directly and indirectly related to many fields (accommodation, catering, transport, connections, insurance, etc.), which are intended not only to tourists, but for satisfaction of the local residents' needs. So far there have not been identified how to assure effective management of a tourism sector at national, regional or local municipal levels.” Following the author's statement “it is one of the most difficult issues, solved in practice that tourism policy formers face in the countries of different economic development level.”

The tourists have contact with both the producer and the product, leading to three important and unique aspects between tourism and sustainable development of tourist destinations. Tourists constitute touch points with the local environment, host communities and employees. The relationship between the host areas (including both social and natural environment) and have impact on local environment, host communities and employment opportunities development (Lee, 2001 ). Therefore, tourists and the tourism industry has important implications for sustainable development of tourism destinations. The sustainable consumption practices should be promoted by tourism sector in order to contribute to sustainable development of tourism destinations (Sharpley, 2000 ; Singh & Singh, 1999 ; Zmyślony, Kowalczyk‐Anioł, & Dembińska, 2020 ).

Currently, scientists are discussing about communities and their centres and increase possibilities of public administrative effectiveness (Szromek, Kruczek, & Walas, 2020 ; Widz & Brzezińska‐Wójcik, 2020 ; Zmyślony, Leszczyński, Waligóra, & Alejziak, 2020 ; Zucco, et al. 2020 ). The involvement of a local community into the participation in the development process of self‐government may be different: political, social, satisfaction of personal needs, business development in a rural area.

Many authors agree (Aldebert, Dang, & Longhi, 2011 ; Bilgihan & Nejad, 2015 ; Peters & Pikkemaat, 2006 ; Szromek & Naramski, 2019 ; Zarębski, Kwiatkowski, Malchrowicz‐Mośko, & Oklevik, 2019 ) that the most important factor, fostering competiveness in tourism business is implementation of various kind of innovations. Creation of a new service and development of an old – an innovative process that enables the introduction of original services to the market. Creation of green tourism services – an innovation process that attracts environmentally responsible tourists. The main aim – satisfaction of consumers' needs. Creation and development of new services is the main condition for the company's growth and functioning, empowering the increase of the market share, seeking for aims of the growth of sales volume and profit and to limit the entrance of new competitors into the market (Aldebert et al., 2011 ). Innovative activities are a criterion of success for economic growth and social welfare, grounding on advance that fosters the development of business companies. It involves social change processes, fostering innovations. Therefore, one of the key sources of competitive advantage – application of innovations, creation of innovative products and services as innovations are more frequently seen as the key source of competitive advantage. Under the conditions of contemporary market, businesspeople are forced to search for the ways how to implement innovative activities in order to be able to expand their possibilities, constantly develop and change and through the satisfaction of consumers' needs to achieve excellent results.

Developing tourism business, the most significant element is employees that communicate with a client directly and also to address the local communities needs. For tourism agencies and their specialist, in order to meet leisure, recreational or creative interests and needs of customers it is necessary to have necessary theoretical and methodological knowledge, an ability to find out the interests and needs of resident community in different fields of leisure activities, an ability to involve children, teenagers, the disabled and the elderly to active cultural activities (Bilgihan & Nejad, 2015 ).

The corporate social responsibility initiatives, corporate governance and business excellence which can also provide valuable inputs to sustainable tourism development if properly addressed by companies operating in tourism and other related business sectors (Popescu, 2019 ; Popescu & Popescu, 2019 ).

3.3. Research findings

Sustainable tourism development can be achieved without damage to competitiveness of this sector development if such important issues like ageing human population and disable people needs, sustainable consumption and sustainable development of tourism destinations will be addressed by providing tourism services.

Therefore, in order to address the main economic sustainability issues or to strengthen the competitiveness of sustainable tourism sector, it is necessary to tackle with many social and environmental issues linked to sustainable tourism development in tourist destinations. All these economic, social and environmental issues need to be addressed together: welfare and need of local communities, sustainable development priorities of tourism destinations to changing demographic profile of tourists and their changing needs for tourism services and products. Sustainable consumption issues should be taken as priority by developing tourism products and services in order to address environmental sustainability issues. Social issues of sustainability in tourism development are linked with contribution to local communities development and addressing the needs for tourism products and services of aging society and disabled people.

In Figure ​ Figure5 5 the main dimensions of sustainable tourism development are interlinked with drivers of behavioural changes and their implications to sustainable consumption. At the same time this figure summarizes the main research finding and provides future research guidelines for investigation of sustainable tourism development paths and challenges.

The main dimensions of sustainable tourism development and their implications to sustainable consumption [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com ]

The current COVID‐19 outbreak is affecting tourism industry and rising new challenges for sustainable tourism development. According to Lew ( 2020 ), companies that survive the pandemic will need to make their products more resilient to future pandemics—which health experts warn will continue to occur—and be able to adapt to the predicted change in consumer interests, which will include greater demand for sustainable products. The challenge for global sustainable tourism will be to strike a balance between maintaining activity in rich countries, while avoiding overcrowding, and bringing activity to poor countries, some of which are overly dependent on the sector and markets that will need a lot of incentives to recover (Romagosa, 2020 ). In a post‐Covid world, changes to travel and tourism are inevitable and will likely be driven by a combination of consumer choice, destination availability and regulatory change (Spalding, Burke, & Fyall, 2020 ). Therefore, these issues are also need to be addressed in future research shaping sustainable tourism development trends at the risks of pandemics which can arise also in future as well.

4. CONCLUSIONS

Summarizing it can be stated that although sustainable development and sustainable tourism are gaining more and more attention; however, the following are not implemented completely neither by tourism service suppliers, providers nor by the very tourists. In order that sustainable and responsible tourism turned into a social norm, it is needed to educate both organizations and consumers as well interested parties systematically.

There are new perspectives of sustainable tourism development in terms of products and services, focusing on new tourism kinds and separate consumers' segments, focusing on elderly and disabled as well as green tourism services. During the last two decades, due to globalization, tourism has turned to be available to many people, especially of the middle‐class, and as a result, tourism industry has become one of the greatest industry fields in the world. Although, tourism has become available to a majority, and was is easier to travel, some social groups, for example, disabled people and seniors usually were underestimated and forgotten in the tourism market, as they represented the minority that have low economic power. However, due to the low rate of birth in the whole world and the high number of the elderly, this situation has got a new trend and currently, seniors have become a wide and important group that provides with greater use of tourism services than other groups.

As tourism services have impact on host areas including impacts on local environment, host communities and employment opportunities development, the tourism industry has important implications for sustainable development of tourism destinations. The sustainable consumption practices should be promoted by tourism sector in order to contribute to sustainable development of tourism destinations.

There is wide penetration of sustainable consumption aspect of sustainable tourism. The tourists, are currently looking for sustainable tourism services and enjoy responsible consumption practices therefore they are keen to select sustainable tourism service packages that are proposed by various tourism organizations.

Competitiveness and environmental and social issues of sustainable tourism development can be addressed together by implementing innovations and fostering sustainable consumption principles, providing new tourism services for disabled and old people and achieving completive advantage together by contributing to welfare and needs of local communities and dealing with sustainable development priorities of tourism destinations.

The demographic profile of tourists and their changing needs for tourism services and products should be also addressed. Therefore, the sustainable consumption and social tourism functions should be taken as priority by developing tourism products and services in order to address environmental and social sustainability issues.

The current COVID‐19 outbreak will have significant effect on tourism industry and provides new challenges for sustainable tourism development. Companies in tourism sector that survive the pandemic will need to make their products more resilient to future pandemics—which health experts warn will continue to occur—and be able to adapt to the predicted change in consumer interests, which will include greater demand for sustainable products. In a post‐Covid world, changes to travel and tourism are inevitable and will likely be driven by a combination of consumer choice, destination availability and regulatory change, therefore, these issues are also need to be addressed in future including the sustainable consumption practices which should be further promoted and fully integrated in tourism sector by including also international agreements on carbon footprint or other limitations etc.

Another important issues for future research are linked with corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and excellence models of business performance which can provide valuable inputs to sustainable tourism development if properly addressed by business sectors (Popescu, 2019 ; Popescu & Popescu, 2019 ).

The further studies how to ensure social tourism development are necessary to ensure innovations in this field as well as provision of tourism services for disabled and old people should be also put as priority for policy agenda in European Union taking into account current trends of ageing population in all EU Member States and risks of pandemics.

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Ecotourism and sustainable development: a scientometric review of global research trends

• Published: 21 February 2022
• Volume 25 , pages 2977–3003, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Lishan Xu 1 , 2 ,
• Changlin Ao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8826-7356 1 , 3 ,
• Baoqi Liu 1 &
• Zhenyu Cai 1  

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With the increasing attention and awareness of the ecological environment, ecotourism is becoming ever more popular, but it still brings problems and challenges to the sustainable development of the environment. To solve such challenges, it is necessary to review literature in the field of ecotourism and determine the key research issues and future research directions. This paper uses scientometrics implemented by CiteSpace to conduct an in-depth systematic review of research and development in the field of ecotourism. Two bibliographic datasets were obtained from the Web of Science, including a core dataset and an expanded dataset, containing articles published between 2003 and 2021. Our research shows that ecotourism has been developing rapidly in recent years. The research field of ecotourism spans many disciplines and is a comprehensive interdisciplinary subject. According to the research results, the evolution of ecotourism can be roughly divided into three phases: human disturbance, ecosystem services and sustainable development. It could be concluded that it has entered the third stage of Shneider’s four-stage theory of scientific discipline. The research not only identifies the main clusters and their advance in ecotourism research based on high impact citations and research frontier formed by citations, but also presents readers with new insights through intuitive visual images.

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1 Introduction

Ecotourism, which has appeared in academic literature since the late 1980s, is a special form of nature-based tourism that maintains the well-being of the local community while protecting the environment and provides tourists with a satisfying nature experience and enjoyment (Ceballos-Lascuráin, 1996 ; Higgins, 1996 ; Orams, 1995 ). With years of research and development, ecotourism has risen to be a subject of investigation in the field of tourism research (Weaver & Lawton, 2007 ). In 2002, the United Nations declared it the International Year of Ecotourism (IYE), and the professional Journal of Ecotourism was established in the same year.

With the progress and maturity of ecotourism as an academic research field, countless scholars have put forward standards and definitions for ecotourism (Sirakaya et al., 1999 ; Wight, 1993 ). The main objectives of ecotourism emphasize long-term sustainable development (Whitelaw et al., 2014 ), including the conservation of natural resources, the generation of economic income, education, local participation and the promotion of social benefits such as local economic development and infrastructure (Ardoin et al., 2015 ; Coria & Calfucura, 2012 ; Krüger, 2005 ; Oladeji et al., 2021 ; Ross & Wall, 1999 ; Valdivieso et al., 2015 ). It can also boost rural economies and alleviate poverty in developing countries (Snyman, 2017 ; Zhong & Liu, 2017 ).

With unrestricted increasing attention to the ecological environment and the improvement of environmental awareness, ecotourism is becoming ever more prevalent, and the demand for tourism is increasing year by year (CREST, 2019 ). This increase, however, leads to a number of environmental, social and economic challenges in the development of ecotourism. For example, due to the low public awareness of ecotourism, the increase in tourists has brought a series of negative impacts on the local ecological environment, culture and economy, including disrespect for local culture and environmental protection, as well as more infrastructure construction and economic burden to meet the needs of tourists (Ahmad et al., 2018 ; Chiu et al., 2014 ; Shasha et al., 2020 ; Xu et al., 2020 ). Such challenges and contradictions are urgent problems to be tackled by the sustainable development of ecotourism. Especially against the backdrop of the current pandemic, tourism has experienced a severe blow, but climate change and other environmental issues have not been improved (CREST, 2020 ). In this context, facing these challenges and difficulties, it is essential to re-examine the future development path of ecotourism, to explore how government agencies can formulate appropriate management policies while preserving the environment and natural resources to support sustainable tourism development. Accordingly, it is necessary to consult literature in the field of ecotourism to understand the research progress and fundamental research issues, to identify challenges, suitable methods and future research direction of ecotourism.

Some previous reviews of ecotourism offer a preview of research trends in this rapidly developing area. Weaver and Lawton ( 2007 ) provide a comprehensive assessment of the current state and future progress of contemporary ecotourism research, starting with the supply and demand dichotomy of ecotourism, as well as fundamental areas such as quality control, industry, external environment and institutions. Ardoin et al. ( 2015 ) conducted a literature review, analyzing the influence of nature tourism on ecological knowledge, attitudes, behavior and potential research into the future. Niñerola et al. ( 2019 ) used the bibliometric method and VOSviewer to study the papers on sustainable development of tourism in Scopus from 1987 to 2018, including literature landscape and development trends. Shasha et al. ( 2020 ) used bibliometrics and social network analysis to review the research progress of ecotourism from 2001 to 2018 based on the Web of Science database using BibExcel and Gephi and explored the current hot spots and methods of ecotourism research. These reviews have provided useful information for ecotourism research at that time, but cannot reflect the latest research trends and emerging development of ecotourism either of timeliness, data integrity, research themes or methods.

This study aims to reveal the theme pattern, landmark articles and emerging trends in ecotourism knowledge landscape research from macro- to micro-perspectives. Unlike previous literature surveys, from timeliness, our dataset contains articles published between 2003 and 2021, and it will reveal more of the trends that have emerged over the last 3 years. Updating the rapidly developing literature is important as recent discoveries from different areas can fundamentally change collective knowledge (Chen et al., 2012 , 2014a ). To ensure data integrity, two bibliographic datasets were generated from Web of Science, including a core dataset using the topic search and an expanded dataset using the citation expansion method, which is more robust than defining rapidly growing fields using only keyword lists (Chen et al., 2014b ). And from the research theme and method, our review focuses on the area of ecotourism and is instructed by a scientometric method conducted by CiteSpace, an analysis system for visualizing newly developing trends and key changes in scientific literature (Chen et al., 2012 ). Emerging trends are detected based on metrics calculated by CiteSpace, without human intervention or working knowledge of the subject matter (Chen et al., 2012 ). Choosing this approach can cover a more extensive and diverse range of related topics and ensure repeatability of analysis with updated data (Chen et al., 2014b ).

In addition, Shneider’s four-stage theory will be used to interpret the results in this review. According to Shneider’s four-stage theory of scientific discipline (Shneider, 2009 ), the development of a scientific discipline is divided into four stages. Stage I is the conceptualization stage, in which the objects and phenomena of a new discipline or research are established. Stage II is characterized by the development of research techniques and methods that allow researchers to investigate potential phenomena. As a result of methodological advances, there is a further understanding of objects and phenomena in the field of new subjects at this stage. Once the techniques and methods for specific purposes are available, the research enters Stage III, where the investigation is based primarily on the application of the new research method. This stage is productive, in which the research results have considerably enhanced the researchers’ understanding of the research issues and disclosed some unknown phenomena, leading to interdisciplinary convergence or the emergence of new research directions or specialties. The last stage is Stage IV, whose particularity is to transform tacit knowledge into conditional knowledge and generalized knowledge, so as to maintain and transfer the scientific knowledge generated in the first three stages.

The structure of this paper is construed as follows. The second part describes the research methods employed, the scientometric approach and CiteSpace, as well as the data collection. In the third part, the bibliographic landscape of the core dataset is expounded from the macroscopic to the microscopic angle. The fourth part explores the developments and emerging trends in the field of ecotourism based on the expanded dataset and discusses the evolution phase of ecotourism. The final part is the conclusion of this study. Future research of ecotourism is prospected, and the limitations of this study are discussed.

2 Methods and data collection

2.1 scientometric analyses and citespace.

Scientometrics is a branch of informatics that involves quantitative analysis of scientific literature in order to capture emerging trends and knowledge structures in a particular area of study (Chen et al., 2012 ). Science mapping tools generate interactive visual representations of complex structures by feeding a set of scientific literature through scientometrics and visual analysis tools to highlight potentially important patterns and trends for statistical analysis and visualization exploration (Chen, 2017 ). At present, scientometrics is widely used in many fields of research, and there are also many kinds of scientific mapping software widely used by researchers and analysts, such as VosViewer, SCI2, HistCite, SciMAT, Gephi, Pajek and CiteSpace (Chen, 2011 , 2017 ; Chen et al., 2012 ).

Among these tools, CiteSpace is known for its powerful literature co-citation analysis, and its algorithms and features are constantly being refined as it continues to evolve. CiteSpace is a citation visual analysis software developed under the background of scientometrics and data visualization to analyze the basics that are included in scientific analysis (Chen, 2017 ; Chen et al., 2012 ). It is specialized designed to satisfy the need for systematic review in rapidly changing complicated areas, particularly with the ability to identify and explain emerging trends and transition patterns (Chen et al., 2014a ). It supports multiple types of bibliometric research, such as collaborative network analysis, co-word analysis, author co-citation analysis, document co-citation analysis, and temporal and spatial visualization (Chen, 2017 ). Currently, CiteSpace has been extensively used in more than 60 fields, including computer science, information science, management and medicine (Abad-Segura et al., 2019 ; Chen, 2017 ).

In this paper, we utilize CiteSpace (5.8.R1) to analyze acquired bibliographies of ecotourism to study emerging trends and developments in this field. From macro to micro, from intuitive to complex, from whole to part and from general to special, the writing ideas are adopted. Figure  1 presented the specific research framework of this study.

The research framework of this study

2.2 Data collection

Typical sources of scientific literature are Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Considering the quantity and quality of data, the Web of Science database was expected to provide the original data in this research. In order to comprehend the research status and development trends of ecotourism, this study systematically reviewed the ecotourism literature collected on the Web of Science Core Collection. The Web of Science Core Collection facilitates access to the world’s leading scholarly journals, books and proceedings of conferences in the sciences, social sciences, art, and humanities, as well as access to their entire citation network. It mainly includes Science Citation Index Expanded from 2003 to current and Social Sciences Citation Index from 2004 to present. Therefore, the data obtained in this study are from 2003 and were consulted on June 3, 2021.

In the process of data retrieval, it is frequently confronted with the choice between recall rate and precision rate. To address the problem of low recall rate in keyword or topic retrieval, Chen et al. ( 2014a , b ) expanded the retrieval results through ‘citation expansion’ and ‘comprehensive topic search’ strategies. However, when the recall rate is high, the accuracy rate will decrease correspondingly. In practical standpoint, instead of refining and cleaning up the original search results, a simpler and more efficient way is to cluster or skip these unrelated branches. Priority should be placed on ensuring recall rate, and data integrity is more important than data for accuracy. Therefore, two ecotourism documentation datasets, the core dataset and the expanded dataset, were obtained from the Web of Science by using comprehensive topic search and citation expansion method. The latter approach has been proved more robust than using keyword lists only to define fast-growing areas (Chen et al., 2014b ). A key bibliographic landscape is generated based on the core dataset, followed by more thorough research of the expanded dataset.

2.2.1 The core dataset

The core dataset was derived through comprehensive subject retrieval in Web of Science Core Collection. The literature type was selected as an article or review, and the language was English. The period spans 2003 to 2021. The topic search query is composed of three phrases of ecotourism: ‘ ecotour* ’ OR ‘ eco-tour* ’ OR ‘ ecological NEAR/5 tour* ’. The wildcard * is used to capture related variants of words, for example, ecotour, ecotourism, ecotourist and ecotourists. The related records that are requested include finding these terms in the title, abstract or keywords. The query yielded 2991 original unique records.

2.2.2 The expanded dataset

The expanded dataset includes the core dataset and additional records obtained by reference link association founded on the core dataset. The principle of citation expansion is that if an article cites at least one article in the core dataset, we can infer that it is related to the topic (Garfield, 1955 ). The expanded dataset is comprised of 27,172 unique records, including the core dataset and the articles that cited them. Both datasets were used for the following scientometrics analysis.

3 Bibliographic landscape based on the core dataset

The core dataset consists of a total of 2991 literature from 2003 to 2021. This study utilized the core dataset to conduct an overall understanding of the bibliographic landscape in the field of ecotourism.

3.1 Landscape views of core dataset

The distribution of the yearly publication of bibliographic records in the core and expanded datasets is presented in Fig.  2 . It can be observed that the overall number of ecotourism-related publications is on the rise, indicating that the scholarly community is increasingly interested in ecotourism. After 2018, the growth rate increased substantially. And in 2020, the number of publications in the expanded dataset is close to 5000, almost double that of 2017 and 5 times that of 2011. This displays the rapid development of research in the field of ecotourism in recent years, particularly after 2018, more and more researchers began to pay attention to this field, which also echoes the trend of global tourism development and environmental protection. With the increase in personal income, tourism has grown very rapidly, and with it, tourism revenue and tourist numbers, especially in developing states. For instance, the number of domestic tourists in China increased from 2.641 billion in 2011 to 6.06 billion in 2019, and tourism revenue increased from 1930.5 billion RMB in 2011 to 5725.1 billion RMB in 2019 (MCT, 2021 ). However, due to the lack of effective management and frequent human activities, the rapid development of tourism has led to various ecological and environmental problems, which require corresponding solutions (Shasha et al., 2020 ). This has played an active role in promoting the development of ecotourism and triggered a lot of related research. In addition, since 2005, the expanded dataset has contained numerous times as many references as the core dataset, demonstrating the importance of using citation expansion for literature retrieval in scientometric review studies.

The distribution of bibliographic records in core and expanded dataset. Note The data were consulted on June 3, 2021

The data were consulted on June 3, 2021

The dual-map overlay of scientific map literature as Fig.  3 shows, against the background of global scientific map from more than 10,000 journals covered by Web of Science, represents the distribution and connections on research bases and application fields across the entire dataset of the research topics (Chen & Leydesdorff, 2014 ). Colored lines are citation links, and numbered headings are cluster labels. On the left side is the journal distribution which cites literature, regarding the field application of ecotourism, mainly covers multiple disciplines such as 3. Ecology, Earth, Marine, 6. Psychology, Education, Health, 7. Veterinary, Animal Science and 10. Economics, Economic and Political. On the right side is the distribution of journals of cited literature, representing the research basis of ecotourism. As can be observed from the figure, ecotourism research is based on at least five disciplines on the right, including 2. Environmental, Toxicology, Nutrition, 7. Psychology, Education, Social, 8. Molecular, Biology, Genetics, 10. Plant, Ecology, Zoology and 12. Economics, Economic, Political. It can be viewed that the research field of ecotourism spans multiple disciplines and is a comprehensive and complex subject. The dual-map overlay provides a global visualization of literature growth of the discipline level.

A dual-map overlay of ecotourism literature

The total number of papers issued by a country or an institution reflects its academic focus and overall strength, while centrality indicates the degree of academic cooperation with others and the influence of published papers. The top 15 countries and institutions for the number of ecotourism papers published from 2003 to 2021 are provided in Table 1 . Similar to the study of Shasha et al. ( 2020 ), the ranking of the top six countries by the number of publications remains unchanged. As can be seen from the table, the USA ranks first in the world, far ahead in both the number of publications and the centrality. China ranks second in global ecotourism publications, followed by Australia, England, South Africa and Canada. While the latest data show that Taiwan (China), Turkey and South Korea appear on the list. Overall, the top 15 countries with the most publications cover five continents, containing a number of developed and developing, which shows that ecotourism research is receiving global attention. In terms of international academic cooperation and impact of ecotourism, Australia and England share second place, Italy and France share fourth place, followed by South Africa and Spain. China’s centrality is relatively low compared to the number of publications, ranking eighth. Academic cooperation between countries is of great significance. Usually, countries with high academic publishing level cooperate closely due to similar research interests. International academic cooperation has enhanced each other’s research capacity and promoted the development of ecotourism research. Therefore, although some countries have entered this list with the publication number, they should attach importance to increase academic cooperation with other countries and improving the international influence of published papers.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and its university are the most prolific when it draws to institutions’ performance. It is the most important and influential research institute in China, especially in the field of sustainable development science. Australia has four universities on the list, with Griffith University and James Cook University in second and third place. USA also includes four universities, with the University of Florida in fourth place. South Africa, a developing country, gets three universities, with the University of Cape Town and the University of Johannesburg fifth and sixth, respectively. In comparison with previous studies (Shasha et al., 2020 ), Iran and Mexico each have one university in the ranking, replacing two universities in Greece, which means that the importance and influence of developing countries in the field of ecotourism is gradually rising. Based on the above results, it can be summarized that the USA, China, Australia and South Africa are relatively active countries in the field of ecotourism, and their development is also in a relatively leading position.

3.2 Most active topics

The foam tree map and the pie chart of the focal topics of ecotourism based on the core dataset generated by Carrot2 through the title of each article is illustrated in Fig.  4 . Developing and developed, case study, protected areas, sustainable tourism, tourism development and developing ecotourism are leading topics in the field of ecotourism research, as well as specific articles under the main topics. The lightweight view generated by Carrot2 provides a reference for the research, and then, co-word analysis is employed to more specifically reflect the topics in the research field.

Foam tree map and pie chart of major topics on ecotourism

The topics covered by ecotourism could be exposed by the keywords of the articles in the core dataset. Figure  5 displays the keywords analysis results generated based on the core dataset. From the visualization results in the figure, it can infer that ecotourism, conservation, tourism, management, protected area, impact, biodiversity, sustainability, national park and community are the ten most concerned topics. Distinct colors set out at the time of co-citation keywords first appear, and yellow is generated earlier than red. In addition, Fig.  5 can also reflect the development and emerging topics in the research field, such as China, Mexico, South Africa and other hot countries for ecotourism research; ecosystem service, economic value, climate change, wildlife tourism, rural tourism, forest, marine protected area and other specific research directions; valuation, contingent valuation, choice experiment and other research methods; willingness to pay, preference, benefit, perception, attitude, satisfaction, experience, behavior, motivation, risk, recreation and other specific research issues.

A landscape view of keywords based on the core dataset

4 Emerging trends and developments based on the expanded dataset

The expanded dataset, consisting of 27,172 records, is approximately nine times larger than the core dataset. This research applies the expanded dataset to profoundly explore the emerging trends and developments of ecotourism.

4.1 Keywords with citation bursts

Detection of citation bursts can indicate both the scientific community’s interest in published articles and burst keywords as an indicator of emerging tendencies. Figure  6 displays the top 30 keywords with the strongest citation bursts in the expanded dataset. Since 2003, a large number of keywords have exploded. Among them, the strongest bursts include ecotourism, bird, disturbance, reserve, Africa, challenge, sustainable development and strategy. Keywords with citation burst after 2017 are experience, challenge, sustainable development, willingness to pay, perspective, strategy, quality and satisfaction, which have continued to this day. The results indicate dynamic development and emerging trends in research hotspots in the field of ecotourism.

Top 30 keywords with the strongest citation bursts

4.2 References with citation bursts

Figure  7 sets out the top 30 references in the expanded dataset with citation bursts. The articles with the fastest growing citations can also contribute to describe the dynamics of a field. References with high values in strength column are important milestones of ecotourism research. The two articles with strong citation bursts prior to 2010 focused on the human impact on the environment and animals. West et al. ( 2006 ) discussed the relationship between parks and human beings and the social impact of protected areas, and Köndgen et al. ( 2008 ) studied the decline of endangered great apes caused by a human pandemic virus. The paper with the strongest citation burst in the entire expanded dataset was released by Fairhead et al. ( 2012 ), which looked at ‘green grabbing,’ the appropriation of land and resources for environmental purposes. Milcu et al. ( 2013 ) conducted a semi-quantitative review of publications dealing with cultural ecosystem services with the second strongest citation burst, which concluded that the improvement of the evaluation method of cultural ecosystem service value, the research on the value of cultural ecosystem service under the background of ecosystem service and the clarification of policy significance were the new themes of cultural ecosystem service research. In addition, many articles with citation burst discussed the evaluation method of ecosystem services value (Costanza et al., 2014 ; Groot et al., 2010 ), the evaluation of cultural ecosystem service value (Plieninger et al., 2013 ) and its role in ecosystem service evaluation (Chan et al., 2012 ; Chan, Guerry, et al., 2012 ; Chan, Satterfield, et al., 2012 ; Chan, Satterfield, et al., 2012 ; Daniel et al., 2012 ). The most fresh literature with strong citation burst is the article of D’Amato et al. ( 2017 ) published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, which compared and analyzed sustainable development avenues such as green, circular and bio economy. In addition, it is worthwhile noting the use of R in ecotourism, with the persuasive citation burst continuing from 2012 to the present, as indicated by the orange arrow in Fig.  7 .

Top 30 references with the strongest citation bursts

4.3 Landscape view of co-citation analysis

The landscape view of co-citation analysis of Fig.  8 is generated based on the expanded dataset. Using g -index ( k  = 25) selection criteria in the latest edition of CiteSpace, an annual citation network was constructed. The final merged network contained 3294 links, 2122 nodes and 262 co-citation clusters. The three largest linked components cover 1748 connected nodes, representing 82% of the entire network. The modularization degree of the synthetic network is 0.8485, which means that co-citation clustering can clearly define each sub-field of ecotourism. Another weighted mean silhouette value of the clustering validity evaluation is 0.9377, indicating that the clustering degree of the network is also very superior. The harmonic mean value amounts to 0.8909.

A landscape view of the co-citation network based on the expanded dataset

In the co-citation network view, the location of clusters and the correlation between clusters can show the intellectual structure in the field of ecotourism, so that readers can obtain an overall understanding of this field. The network falls into 25 co-citation clusters. The tags for each cluster are generated founded on the title, keywords and abstract of the cited article. Color-coded areas represent the time of first appeared co-citation links, with gray indicating earlier and red later. The nodes in the figure with red tree rings are references to citation bursts.

4.4 Timeline view

In order to further understand the time horizon and study process of developing evolution on clusters, after the generation of co-citation cluster map, the Y -axis is cluster number and the year of citation publication is X -axis, so as to obtain the timeline view of the co-citation network, shown as Fig.  9 . Clusters are organized vertically from largest to smallest. The color curve represents co-citation link coupled with corresponding color year, with gray representing earlier and red representing newer. Larger nodes and nodes with red tree rings indicate high citation or citation burst. The three most cited references of the year demonstrate below each node, in vertical order from least to most.

A timeline visualization of the largest clusters

The timeline view provides a reasonably instinctual and insightful reference to understand the evolutionary path of every subdomain. Figure  9 shows 19 clusters ranging from #0 to #18, with #0 being the largest cluster. As can be seen from the figure, the sustainability and activeness of each cluster are contrasting. For example, the largest cluster has been active since 2006, while the gray and purple clusters are no longer active.

4.5 Major clusters

Taking clustering as a unit and analyzing at the level of clustering, specifically selecting large or new type clustering, is the foothold of co-citation analysis, which can help to understand the principal and latest research fields related to ecotourism. Table 2 displays a summary of the foremost 19 clusters, the first nine of which are all over 100 in size. The silhouette score of all clusters is greater than 0.8, indicating that the homogeneity of each cluster is high. The mean year is the average of the publication dates of references in the cluster. By combining the results in Table 2 , Figs.  8 and 9 , it can be observed that the five largest clusters are #0 cultural ecosystem services, #1 large carnivore, #2 human disturbance, #3 whale shark and #4 ecosystem service. A recent topic is cluster #16 COVID-19 pandemic. #11 Ecological footprint and #14 social media are two relatively youthful fields.

The research status of a research field can be demonstrated by its knowledge base and research frontier. The knowledge base consists of a series of scholarly writing cited by the corresponding article, i.e., cited references, while the research frontier is the writing inspired by the knowledge base, i.e., citing articles. Distinct research frontiers may come from the same knowledge base. Consequently, each cluster is analyzed based on cited references and citing articles. The cited references and citing articles of the five largest clusters are shown in Online Appendix A. Fig a) lists the 15 top cited references with the highest Σ (sigma) value in the cluster, where Σ value indicates that the citation is optimal in terms of the comprehensive performance of structural centrality and citation bursts. Fig b) shows the major citing articles of cluster. The citation behavior of these articles determines the grouping of cited literature and thus forms the cluster. The coverage is the proportion of member citations cited by citing articles.

4.6 Phase evolution research

Through the above analysis of the core dataset and the expanded dataset of ecotourism, we can see the development and evolution of the research field of ecotourism. The research process of ecotourism has gone through several stages, and each stage has its strategic research issues. Research starts with thinking about the relationship between humans and nature, moves to study it as a whole ecosystem, and then explores sustainable development. Hence, the evolution of ecotourism can be roughly parted into three phases.

4.6.1 Phase I: Human disturbance research stage (2003–2010)

This phase of research concentrates on the influence of human activities such as ecotourism on the environment and animals. Representative keywords of this period include ecotourism, human disturbance, response, coral reef, bird, disturbance, recreation, reserve, park, South Africa and people. Representative articles are those published by West et al. ( 2006 ) and Köndgen et al. ( 2008 ) of human impact on the environment and animals. The representative clustering is #2 human disturbance, which is the third largest one, consisting of 130 cited references from 1998 to 2012 with the average year of 2004. This cluster has citation bursts between 2002 and 2010 and has been inactive since then. As showed in Fig S3 a) and b), the research base and frontier are mainly around the impact of human disturbances such as ecotourism on biology and the environment (McClung et al., 2004 ). And as showed in Fig.  8 and Fig.  9 , clusters closely related to #2 belong to this phase and are also no longer active, such as #5 off-road vehicle, #6 protected area, #10 poverty reduction and #12 sustainable lifestyle.

4.6.2 Phase II: Ecosystem services research stage (2011–2015)

In this stage, the content of ecotourism research is diversified and exploded. The research is not confined to the relationship between humans and nature, but begins to investigate it as an entire ecosystem. In addition, some specific or extended areas began to receive attention. Typical keywords are abundance, resource, Africa, risk, predation, consequence and science. The most illustrative papers in this stage are Fairhead et al. ( 2012 )’s discussion on green grabbing and Milcu et al. ( 2013 )’s review on cultural ecosystem services. Other representative papers in this period focused on the evaluation methods of ecosystem service value and the role of cultural ecosystem service in the evaluation of ecosystem service value. Most of the larger clusters in the survey erupted at this stage, including #0 cultural ecosystem services, #1 large carnivore, #3 whale shark, #4 ecosystem services. Some related clusters also belong to this stage, such as #7 neoliberal conservation, #8 responsible behavior, #9 tourism development, #13 mangrove forest, #15 volunteer tourism, #17 circular economy and #18 telecoupling framework.

Cluster #0 cultural ecosystem services are the largest cluster in ecotourism research field, containing 157 cited references from 2006 to 2019, with the mean year being 2012. It commenced to have the citation burst in 2009, with high cited continuing until 2019. Cultural ecosystem services are an essential component of ecosystem services, including spiritual, entertainment and cultural benefits. Thus, in Fig.  8 , the overlap with #4 ecosystem services can obviously be seen. In Cluster #0, many highly cited references have discussed the trade-offs between natural and cultural ecosystem services in ecosystem services (Nelson et al., 2009 ; Raudsepp-Hearne et al., 2010 ) and the important role of cultural ecosystem services in the evaluation of ecosystem services value (Burkhard et al., 2012 ; Chan, Guerry, et al., 2012 ; Chan, Satterfield, et al., 2012 ; Fisher et al., 2009 ; Groot et al., 2010 ). As non-market value, how to evaluate and quantify cultural ecosystem services is also an important issue (Hernández-Morcillo et al., 2012 ; Milcu et al., 2013 ; Plieninger et al., 2013 ). Besides, the exploration of the relationship among biodiversity, human beings and ecosystem services is also the focus of this cluster research (Bennett et al., 2015 ; Cardinale et al., 2012 ; Díaz et al., 2015 ; Mace et al., 2012 ). The citing articles of #0 indicate the continued exploration of the connotation of cultural ecosystem services and their value evaluation methods (Dickinson & Hobbs, 2017 ). It is noteworthy that some articles have introduced spatial geographic models (Havinga et al., 2020 ; Hirons et al., 2016 ) and social media methods (Calcagni et al., 2019 ) as novel methods to examine cultural ecosystem services. In addition, the link and overlap between #0 cultural ecosystem service and #17 circular economy cannot be overlooked.

Ecosystem services relate to all the benefits that humans receive from ecosystems, including supply services, regulatory services, cultural services and support services. Research on cultural ecosystem services is based on the research of ecosystem services. It can be viewed in Fig.  9 that the research and citation burst in #4 was all slightly earlier than #0. Cluster #4 includes 118 references from 2005 to 2019, with an average year of 2011. In its research and development, how to integrate ecosystem services into the market and the payment scheme to protect the natural environment is a significant research topic (Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010 ). In Cluster #4, the most influential literature provides an overview of the payment of ecosystem services (PES) from theory to practice by Engel et al. ( 2008 ). Many highly cited references have discussed PES (Kosoy & Corbera, 2010 ; Muradian et al., 2010 ), including the effectiveness of evaluation (Naeem et al., 2015 ), social equity matters (Pascual et al., 2014 ), the suitability and challenge (Muradian et al., 2013 ), and how to contribute to saving nature (Redford & Adams, 2009 ). The cluster also includes studies on impact assessment of protected areas (Oldekop et al., 2016 ), protected areas and poverty (Brockington & Wilkie, 2015 ; Ferraro & Hanauer, 2014 ), public perceptions (Bennett, 2016 ; Bennett & Dearden, 2014 ) and forest ecosystem services (Hansen et al., 2013 ). The foremost citing articles confirm the dominant theme of ecosystem services, especially the in-depth study and discussion of PES (Muniz & Cruz, 2015 ). In addition, #4 is highly correlated with #7 neoliberal protection, and Fairhead et al. ( 2012 ), a representative article of this stage, belongs to this cluster.

As the second largest cluster, Cluster #1 contains 131 references from 2008 to 2019, with the median year of 2014. As Fig S2 a) shows, the highly cited literature has mainly studied the status and protection of large carnivores (Mace, 2014 ; Ripple et al., 2014 ), including the situation of reduction (Craigie et al., 2010 ), downgrade (Estes et al., 2011 ) and even extinction (Dirzo et al., 2014 ; Pimm et al., 2014 ), and the reasons for such results, such as tourist visits (Balmford et al., 2015 ; Geffroy et al., 2015 ) and the increase in population at the edge of the protected areas (Wittemyer et al., 2008 ). The conservation effects of protected areas on wildlife biodiversity (Watson et al., 2014 ) and the implications of tourist preference heterogeneity for conservation and management (Minin et al., 2013 ) have also received attention. It is worth noting that the high citation rate of a paper using R to estimate the linear mixed-effects model (Bates et al., 2015 ) and the use of R in this cluster. The relationship between biodiversity and ecotourism is highlighted by the representative citing articles in research frontier of this cluster (Chung et al., 2018 ).

Cluster #3 refers to marine predator, and as shown in Fig.  8 , which has a strong correlation with #1. A total of 125 references were cited from 2002 to 2018, with an average year of 2011. References with high citation in #3 mainly studied the extinction and protection of marine life such as sharks (Dulvy et al., 2014 ), as well as the economic value and ecological impact of shark ecotourism (Clua et al., 2010 ; Gallagher & Hammerschlag, 2011 ; Gallagher et al., 2015 ). The paper published by Gallagher et al. ( 2015 ) is both the highly cited reference and main citing article, mainly focusing on the impact of shark ecotourism. It is also noteworthy that #6 protected area, #13 mangrove forest and #29 Mediterranean areas are highly correlated with these two clusters (Fig.  8 ).

Moreover, some clusters are not highly correlated with other clusters, but cannot be neglected at this stage of research. Cluster #8 responsible behavior includes 107 citations with the average year 2013, and mainly studied environmentally responsible behaviors in ecotourism (Chiu et al., 2014 ). Cluster #9 tourism development contains 97 cited references with mean year of 2015, focusing on the impact of such factors as residents’ perception on tourism development (Sharpley, 2014 ). Cluster #15 volunteer tourism consists of 52 citations, with an average year of 2011, which mainly considers the role of volunteer tourism in tourism development and sustainable tourism (Wearing & McGehee, 2013 ). Cluster #18 telecoupling framework has 26 cited references with the mean year being 2015, and the application of the new integrated framework of telecoupling Footnote 1 in ecotourism can be seen (Liu et al., 2015 ).

At this stage, it can be seen that the research field of ecotourism begins to develop in the direction of diversification, including the value evaluation and related research of ecosystem services and cultural ecosystem services, as well as the exploration of wild animals and plants, marine animals and plants and biodiversity. Neoliberal conservation, tourists’ responsible behavior, tourism development, volunteer tourism and circular economy are all explored. Some new research methods have also brought fresh air to this field, such as the introduction of spatial geographic models and social media methods, the discussion of economic value evaluation methods, the widespread use of R and the exploration of telecoupling framework. Therefore, from this stage, research in the field of ecotourism has entered the second stage of scientific discipline development (Shneider, 2009 ), featured by the use and evolution of research tools that can be used to investigate potential phenomena.

4.6.3 Phase III: Sustainable development research stage (2016 to present)

This stage of research continues to explore a series of topics of the preceding phase and further extends the research field on this basis. The keywords at this stage are politics, marine protected area and valuation. Some other keywords are still very active today, such as experience, challenge, sustainable development, willingness to pay, perspective, strategy, quality and satisfaction. The representative article is about sustainable development published by D'Amato et al. ( 2017 ), as shown in Fig.  8 belonging to #17 circular economy. The emerging clusters in this period are #11 ecological footprint, #14 social media and #16 COVID-19 pandemic. Cluster #11 contains 70 cited references from 2013 to 2020 with the mean year 2017. This clustering study mainly used the ecological footprint as an environmental indicator and socioeconomic indicators such as tourism to investigate the hypothesis of environmental Kuznets curve (Ozturk et al., 2016 ; Ulucak & Bilgili, 2018 ). Cluster #14 includes 52 cited references, with an average year of 2016. It can be seen that the introduction of social media data has added new color to research in the field of ecotourism, such as using social media data to quantify landscape value (Zanten et al., 2016 ) and to understand tourists’ preferences for the experience of protected areas (Hausmann et al., 2018 ), as well as from a spatial perspective using social media geo-tagged photos as indicators for evaluating cultural ecosystem services (Richards & Friess, 2015 ). As the latest and most concerned topic, cluster #16 contains 48 cited references, with mean year of 2018. This cluster mainly cites research on over-tourism (Seraphin et al., 2018 ) and sustainable tourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018 ) and explores the impact of pandemics such as COVID-19 on global tourism (Gössling et al., 2021 ).

These emerging clusters at this phase bring fresh thinking to the research of ecotourism. First of all, the analysis of ecological footprint provides a tool for measuring the degree of sustainability and helps to monitor the effectiveness of sustainable programs (Kharrazi et al., 2014 ). Research and exploration of ecological footprint in ecotourism expresses the idea of sustainable development and puts forward reasonable planning and suggestions by comparing the demand of ecological footprint with the carrying capacity of natural ecosystem. Secondly, the use of social media data brings a new perspective of data acquisition to ecotourism research. Such large-scale data acquisition can make up for the limitations of sample size and data sampling bias faced by survey data users and provide a new way to understand and explore tourist behavior and market (Li et al., 2018 ). Finally, the sudden impact of COVID-19 in 2020 and its long-term sustainability has dealt a huge blow to the tourism industry. COVID-19 has highlighted the great need and value of tourism, while fundamentally changing the way destinations, business and visitors plan, manage and experience tourism (CREST, 2020 ). However, the stagnation of tourism caused by the pandemic is not enough to meet the challenges posed by the environment and the climate crisis. Therefore, how to sustain the development of tourism in this context to meet the challenges of the environment and climate change remains an important issue in the coming period of time. These emerging clusters are pushing the boundaries of ecotourism research and the exploration of sustainable development in terms of research methods, data collection and emerging topics.

Despite the fact that the research topics in this stage are richer and more diversified, the core goal of research is still committed to the sustainable development of ecotourism. The introduction of new technologies and the productive results have led to a much-improved understanding of research issues. All this commemorates the entrance of research into the third stage of the development of scientific disciplines (Shneider, 2009 ). In addition to continuing the current research topics, the future development of the field of ecotourism will continue to focus on the goal of sustainable development and will be more diversified and interdisciplinary.

5 Conclusion

This paper uses scientometrics to make a comprehensive visual domain analysis of ecotourism. The aim is to take advantage of this method to conduct an in-depth systematic review of research and development in the field of ecotourism. We have enriched the process of systematic reviews of knowledge domains with features from the latest CiteSpace software. Compared with previous studies, this study not only updated the database, but also extended the dataset with citation expansion, so as to more comprehensively identify the rapidly developing research field. The research not only identifies the main clusters and their advance in ecotourism research based on high impact citations and research frontiers formed by citations, but also presents readers with new insights through intuitive visual images. Through this study, readers can swiftly understand the progress of ecotourism, and on the basis of this study, they can use this method to conduct in-depth analysis of the field they are interested in.

Our research shows that ecotourism has developed rapidly in recent years, with the number of published articles increasing year by year, and this trend has become more pronounced after 2018. The research field of ecotourism spans many disciplines and is a comprehensive interdisciplinary subject. Ecotourism also attracts the attention of numerous developed and developing countries and institutions. The USA, China, Australia and South Africa are in a relatively leading position in the research and development of ecotourism. Foam tree map and pie chart of major topics, and the landscape view of keywords provide the hotspot issues of the research field. The development trend of ecotourism is preliminarily understood by detecting the citation bursts of the keywords and published articles. Co-citation analysis generates the main clusters of ecotourism research, and the timeline visualization of these clusters provides a clearer view for understanding the development dynamics of the research field. Building on all the above results, the research and development of ecotourism can be roughly divided into three stages: human disturbance, ecosystem services and sustainable development. Through the study of keywords, representative literature and main clusters in each stage, the development characteristics and context of each stage are clarified. From the current research results, we can catch sight that the application of methods and software in ecotourism research and the development of cross-field. Supported by the Shneider’s four-stage theory of scientific discipline (Shneider, 2009 ), it can be thought that ecotourism is in the third stage. Research tools and methods have become more potent and convenient, and research perspectives have become more diverse.

Based on the overall situation, research hotspots and development tendency of ecotourism research, it can be seen that the sustainable development of ecotourism is the core issue of current ecotourism research and also an important goal for future development. In the context of the current pandemic, the tourism industry is in crisis, but crisis often breeds innovation, and we must take time to reconsider the way forward. As we look forward to the future of tourism, we must adopt the rigor and dedication required to adapt to the pandemic, adhering to the principles of sustainable development while emphasizing economic reliability, environmental suitability and cultural acceptance. Post-COVID, the competitive landscape of travel and tourism will change profoundly, with preventive and effective risk management, adaptation and resilience, and decarbonization laying the foundation for future competitiveness and relevance (CREST, 2020 ).

In addition, as can be seen from the research and development of ecotourism, the exploration of sustainable development increasingly needs to absorb research methods from diverse fields to guide the formulation of policy. First of all, how to evaluate and quantify ecotourism reasonably and scientifically is an essential problem to be solved in the development of ecotourism. Some scholars choose contingent valuation method (CVM) and choice experiment (CE) in environmental economics to evaluate the economic value of ecotourism, especially non-market value. In addition, the introduction of spatial econometrics and the use of geographic information system (GIS) provide spatial scale analysis methods and results presentation for the sustainable development of ecotourism. The use of social media data implies the application of big data technology in the field of ecotourism, where machine learning methods such as artificial neural networks (ANN) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are increasingly being applied (Talebi et al., 2021 ). The measurement of ecological footprint and the use of telecoupling framework provide a reliable way to measure sustainable development and the interaction between multiple systems. These approaches all have expanded the methodological boundaries of ecotourism research. It is worth noting that R, as an open source and powerful software, is favored by scholars in the field of ecotourism. This programming language for statistical computation is now widely used in statistical analysis, data mining, data processing and mapping of ecotourism research.

The scientometrics method used in this study is mainly guided by the citation model in the literature retrieval dataset. The range of data retrieval exercises restraint by the source of retrieval and the query method utilized. While current methods can meet the requirements, iterative query optimization can also serve to advance in the quality of the data. To achieve higher data accuracy, the concept tree function in the new version of CiteSpace can also serve to clarify the research content of each clustering (Chen, 2017 ). In addition, the structural variation analysis in the new edition is also an interesting study, which can show the citation footprints of typical high-yielding authors and judge the influence of the author on the variability of network structure through the analysis of the citation footprints (Chen, 2017 ).

Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Web of Science.

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This study is funded by Education Department of Heilongjiang Province (1451MSYYB013) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71874026 and No.71171044).

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Lishan Xu, Changlin Ao, Baoqi Liu & Zhenyu Cai

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In this study, LX proposed the research topic, designed the research methodology and framework, and made the data analysis. She was the major contributor in writing the manuscript. CA contributed to the design of the whole paper, including the research topic and methodology, and also participated in the writing and revision of the manuscript. BL and ZC were involved in data collection and analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Xu, L., Ao, C., Liu, B. et al. Ecotourism and sustainable development: a scientometric review of global research trends. Environ Dev Sustain 25 , 2977–3003 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02190-0

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Received : 29 October 2021

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02190-0

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