Ecotourism Research Progress: A Bibliometric Analysis During 1990–2016

The study aims to evaluate research trends of ecotourism, which has attracted wide attention by both researchers and policymakers as an important way to realize sustainable tourism. Bibliometric analysis was carried through the 2,531 records related to ecotourism searching from Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), and Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP) databases from 1990 to 2016. A total of 4,138 keywords were divided into three categories: topical keywords, case-related keywords, and research methods–related keywords. They, respectively, were analyzed on overall development as well as the dynamic changes by three divided stages of ecotourism research. The results showed that Tourism Management was the most prolific journal. U.S.-based authors published more often than those from any other country, whereas among research institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the most prolific contributor. It also revealed that conservation was the key focus, protected area was the main study object, and sustainable tourism was the main aim. The top three countries for cases study were China, the United States, and South Africa, and the main methodologies were contingent valuation method and geographic information system. According to the dynamic analysis, research perspectives changed from ecotourism resources to management and subsequently expanded to multistakeholders involvement, with a rapid expansion of the case and implementation of quantitative research methods. With multidisciplinary involvement and multistakeholders participation, the study of tourist awareness and behavior on ecotourism would become the main aspects for deepening and concreting ecotourism research. Our findings provide a quantitative understanding of global ecotourism research features.