SAGE Open April-June 2020: 1–12 © The Author(s) 2020 DOI: 10.1177/2158244020924052 journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Original Research Introduction Ecological environment pollution has become a difficult and restrictive factor of regional sustainable development (Zhang & Wen, 2008). With increasing awareness of envi- ronment protection, ecotourism has become a special inter- est tourism and considered as an effective way of achieving sustainable development (Buckley, 1994; Pforr, 2001; Ramos & Prideaux, 2014).The concept of ecotourism emerged in the 1980s to address the negative impacts of tra- ditional tourism, such as environmental damage and cultural erosion. Thus, ecotourism generally was considered to fall within sustainable, ecologically sustainable, environmen- tally appropriate, and environmentally responsible tourism (Farrell & Runyan, 1991; Sharpley & Duffy, 2006; Wight, 1993). The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), which was found in 1990, first proposed an authoritative definition of ecotourism, and after years of exploration, presently defined ecotourism as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education” (TIES, 2015). In a span of over 30 years of development, a large number of studies of ecotourism from various aspects emerged worldwide, such as framework establishment (Fennell, 2001; Fleischer, 2010; Ross et al., 1999), function and valuation (He et al., 2008; D. N. B. Lee & Snepenger, 1992; Wendy & Jim, 2012), environmental capacity (Sagoff, 1995; Kang & Xu, 2010; Shi et al., 2015), community participation (S. Jones, 2005; Scheyvens, 1999; Stem et al., 2003; Stronza & Gordillo, 2008), ecotourists’ intention and behavior (Russell, 1995; Shamsub & Lebel, 2012; Teeroovengadum, 2019), and so on. Being an effective way to realize sustainable tourism, ecotourism has been studied not only in various types of 924052SGO XX X 10.1177/2158244020924052SAGE OpenLiu and Li research-article 20202020 1 School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, P.R. China 2 Minjiang Teachers College, Fuzhou, P.R. China 3 Nanning Normal University, P.R. China Corresponding Author: Wan-Yi Li, Key Laboratory of Beibu Gulf Environment Change and Resources Utilization of Ministry of Education, and Guangxi Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Intelligent Simulation, Nanning Normal University, Nanning 530001, P.R. China. Email: [email protected] Ecotourism Research Progress: A Bibliometric Analysis During 1990–2016 Shaoai Liu 1,2 and Wan-Yi Li 3 Abstract 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. Keywords ecotourism, bibliometric analysis, dynamic changes, sustainable tourism
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Ecotourism Research Progress: A Bibliometric Analysis During 1990–2016https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020924052
SAGE Open April-June 2020: 1 –12 © The Author(s) 2020 DOI: 10.1177/2158244020924052 journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo
Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of
the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Original Research
Introduction
Ecological environment pollution has become a difficult and restrictive factor of regional sustainable development (Zhang & Wen, 2008). With increasing awareness of envi- ronment protection, ecotourism has become a special inter- est tourism and considered as an effective way of achieving sustainable development (Buckley, 1994; Pforr, 2001; Ramos & Prideaux, 2014).The concept of ecotourism emerged in the 1980s to address the negative impacts of tra- ditional tourism, such as environmental damage and cultural erosion. Thus, ecotourism generally was considered to fall within sustainable, ecologically sustainable, environmen- tally appropriate, and environmentally responsible tourism (Farrell & Runyan, 1991; Sharpley & Duffy, 2006; Wight, 1993). The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), which was found in 1990, first proposed an authoritative definition of ecotourism, and after years of exploration, presently defined ecotourism as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education” (TIES, 2015).
In a span of over 30 years of development, a large number of studies of ecotourism from various aspects emerged worldwide, such as framework establishment (Fennell, 2001; Fleischer, 2010; Ross et al., 1999), function and valuation (He et al., 2008; D. N. B. Lee & Snepenger, 1992; Wendy & Jim, 2012), environmental capacity (Sagoff, 1995; Kang & Xu, 2010; Shi et al., 2015), community participation (S. Jones, 2005; Scheyvens, 1999; Stem et al., 2003; Stronza & Gordillo, 2008), ecotourists’ intention and behavior (Russell, 1995; Shamsub & Lebel, 2012; Teeroovengadum, 2019), and so on. Being an effective way to realize sustainable tourism, ecotourism has been studied not only in various types of
924052 SGOXXX10.1177/2158244020924052SAGE OpenLiu and Li research-article20202020
1School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, P.R. China 2Minjiang Teachers College, Fuzhou, P.R. China 3Nanning Normal University, P.R. China
Corresponding Author: Wan-Yi Li, Key Laboratory of Beibu Gulf Environment Change and Resources Utilization of Ministry of Education, and Guangxi Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Intelligent Simulation, Nanning Normal University, Nanning 530001, P.R. China. Email: [email protected]
Ecotourism Research Progress: A Bibliometric Analysis During 1990–2016
Shaoai Liu1,2 and Wan-Yi Li3
Abstract 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.
Keywords ecotourism, bibliometric analysis, dynamic changes, sustainable tourism
2 SAGE Open
natural areas but also in different countries and regions. There were many publications based on ecotourism, and the trends of ecotourism research have received continuous attention (Das & Chatterjee, 2015; Liu et al., 2013; Nzengy’a, 2004; Sun & Gao, 2012; Weaver & Lawton, 2007). However, a comprehensive statistical review of global ecotourism research was not reported.
In this study, bibliometric analysis was used to quantita- tively and qualitatively investigate the global research trend of ecotourism during the period from 1990 to 2016. Specifically, this article aims at identifying (a) the general patterns for document type, publication output, journals and contribution of territories/countries and institutions in eco- tourism research; (b) the overall development of the research topics, the geographic areas of case study, and the research methods in ecotourism; (c) the characteristics of dynamic changes of ecotourism research at developing stages. This study might visualize features of global ecotourism research that may serve as a potential guide for future studies.
Materials and Methods
The Web of Science (WoS), developed by Thomson Reuters Inc., is regarded as a comprehensive research platform. WoS has been used as literature database for bibliometric analysis of tourism research (Schubert & Glänzel, 2007). Therefore, WoS is chosen as the source database for bibliometric analy- sis in this study.
The Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) are commonly used databases, covering influential journals (Gu, 2004). In addition, the Conference Proceedings Citation Index, including Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (CPCI-S) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), revealing emerg- ing trends and new ideas before they appear in journals, should not be neglected. Therefore, the strings “ecotourism” (or) “eco-tourism” (or) “ecological tourism” were used to search titles, abstracts, and keywords of the documents published between 1990 and 2016 in the database of SCI-E, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, and CPCI-SSH. Since the first authoritative definition of ecotourism was proposed in 1990, our bibliomet- ric analysis began at this time. All publication used in this work was downloaded on March 2, 2017. A total of 2,531 records were obtained. The documents were analyzed accord- ing to document type, country or territory and institutions affiliation of authors, study country/territory, and keywords.
The bibliometric indicators, including document type, pub- lication year, distribution of publications by country or terri- tory, journal, research institution, international collaboration, and keywords, were imported into Microsoft Excel 2013 and then used for further analysis. The affiliations of authors were geocoded by CiteSpace 5.0.R2 and the worldwide geographic distribution of authors was plotted using ArcGIS 10.2. Co-word analysis, based on social network analysis (SNA),
was employed in this study to reveal the hotspots of ecotour- ism research. Among the data obtained, only 1,672 records could be used to analyze the co-word network, as 606 publica- tions did not include keywords. The author names and key- words were extracted from the 1,672 records. To prevent the results from being distorted by words having synonyms, each keyword’s synonyms were combined. Ultimately, a total of 4,138 keywords, 60 of which are used in more than 10 articles, were divided into three categories: topical keywords (related to the research content and subject), case-related keywords (related to the geographic areas being studied), and research methods–related keywords (related to research and data analy- sis methods). Based on this, the topical keywords used Gephi 0.9.1 for co-word analysis and Ucinet 6 for clustering analysis. The case-related keywords were processed using the inverse distance weight interpolation technique in ArcGIS 10.2, while the research methods–related keywords were analyzed by computing the descriptive statistics.
Results and Discussion
Document Type
In this study, 12 document types were identified from the total of 2,531 publication records during the last 27 years. Among them, article (1,582 records) was the most frequently used document type, accounting for 62.50% of total publica- tions and was followed far behind by conference proceedings (696, or 27.50%), book reviews (91, or 3.60%), reviews (73, or 1.56%), editorials (33, or 1.30%), and meeting abstracts (27, or 1.07%). Other document types, for example, note, let- ter, news item, book chapter, correction, book review, and poetry, accounted for less than 1%.
Characteristics of Published Output
The annual amount distributions of all documents and the top three document types related to ecotourism during the last 27 years are counted and displayed in Figure 1.
The number of annual publications showed a rapid growth, increasing from 2 in 1990 to 196 in 2016, and a fluc- tuating growth with two fast-growing nodes appearing in 1996 and 2007. Examining the trends of different document types, the growth curve of articles is the most closely aligned with that of the total document count.
According to a standard practice in bibliometrics (De Bellis, 2009), only articles were selected among all publica- tions for analysis of research output features. Specifically, 1,673 articles accounting for 66% of the total literature were analyzed. A growth trend was apparent in the annual counts of published articles, authors, and cited references. The annual publication count increased from 2 in 1990 to 196 in 2016, representing an annual growth rate of 96%, while the fraction of authors writing about ecotourism grew by approximately 322.5% between 1990 and 2016, demonstrating that an
Liu and Li 3
increasing number of scholars were interested in ecotourism. Similarly, the average number of cited references per ecotour- ism publication, numbering 5 in 1990, rose steadily to 50 in 2016. The continuous increase of publications and references was illustrative of a positive growth trend.
Combined with the annual changes in publications caused by the social activities of ecotourism, the total development was divided into three stages.
The initial stage: 1990–1999. The concept of ecotourism was put forward but did not draw much attention from 1990 to 1993. The first definition of ecotourism was proposed by TIES in 1990, attracting extensive attention. With the pro- posal of a sustainable development strategy by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, much more attention was given to envi- ronmental protection in tourism development (Buckley, 1994; Goodwin, 1996). As an effective way of sustainable tourism development, ecotourism was promoted both in the- ory and practice (Masberg & Morales, 1999; Ross et al., 1999; Scheyvens, 1999). With rising social interest, the quantity of academic research related to ecotourism has also increased. This stage peaked in 1996, when growth in research output slowed down. During the following years, the annual publication count of documents remained stable at approximately 40 until 1999. As this period was character- ized by a low cumulative output (fewer than 250 publica- tions), it was named the initial stage of ecotourism research.
The rapid growth stage: 2000–2009. After a decade of devel- opment, the concept of ecotourism had been widely accepted. It could be said that ecotourism research entered a rapid growth stage since 2000. Beginning in 2002, the year
designated the International Year of Ecotourism (IYE), research was being conducted worldwide, with more in- depth exploration aiming at an accurate understanding of ecotourism (Fennell, 2001; Weaver, 2005). In addition, the International Ecotourism Standard, another important achievement of the IYE, was regarded as a complete and practical guide to ecotourism activities. Promoted globally, ecotourism has drawn greater attention from academic researchers. Under this background, the publication output related to ecotourism experienced small fluctuations between 2001 and 2004 and showed a rapid growth beginning in 2005. By 2009, it was nearly 2 times more than 2005, as ecotourism commenced in the Third World (Chok et al., 2007; Mowforth & Munt, 2008).
The steady growth stage: 2010–2016. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) celebrated World Tourism Day 2010 under the theme “Tourism and Biodiver- sity,” emphasizing a close relationship between tourism and environmental protection, promoting the international spread of the concept of ecotourism. Driven by this, the annual pub- lication count stayed in the peak amount since 2009, exceed- ing 200 in 2012 and subsequently experiencing stable growth.
Journals Rankings
Table 1 shows the statistics for the top 10 journals most active in ecotourism during 1990–2016, including the total counts of publications and citations, the average number of citations per publication, and the impact factors.
The top three most prolific journals were all in the field of tourism, accounting for more than 10% of the total publica- tion count. Among the top three, Tourism Management with
Figure 1. Annual amount of all documents and the top three document types related to ecotourism during the last 27 years.
4 SAGE Open
the highest impact factor of 3.14 boasts the highest total pub- lication count of 102, as well as the total count of 2,800 cita- tions. It was noteworthy that journals ranked between 4 and 9 by total publication count were in the field of environmen- tal science rather than tourism. Among such environmental science journals, Biological Conservation has the highest impact factor of 3.985 among the top 10 journals, as well as the highest average number of citations per publication (36.38). The focus areas of the top 10 published journals indicate that ecotourism not only was an important part of tourism research but also receives much attention from envi- ronmental science aspect.
Contribution of Territories/Countries and Institutions
The contribution of the top 10 territories/countries and research institutions from 1990 to 2016 is shown in Tables 2 and 3, respectively.
As seen in Table 2, the United States (646) accounts for the largest number of publications, followed by China (361), the United Kingdom (239), Australia (219), and Canada (147). Whereas in the terms of international cooperation, China, Brazil, Malaysia, and Taiwan ranked much lower than that of their total publication. Among the top 10 high-yield- ing countries, the rankings, resulting from considering the publications’ first authors and those resulting from consider- ing co-authors, were nearly identical.
Seen in Table 3, it was worth mentioning that, at 5, the United States has the largest share of the top 10 most prolific research institutions, followed by Australia (2). Among the research institutions, the contribution of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the largest at 31 publications, fol- lowed by Griffith University (26) and University of Florida (19). Certain institutions, Utah State University, Cornell University, and the University of Washington, though ranked in the top 10 by the total publication count, they ranked far lower by counts of single institution-authored papers. This
Table 1. Top 10 Most Active Journals in Ecotourism During 1990–2016.
Journal title TP (%) TC TC/TP IF
Tourism Management 102 (4.03) 2,800 27.45 3.14 Journal of Sustainable Tourism 85 (3.36) 1,153 13.56 2.48 Annals of Tourism Research 81 (3.20) 1,769 21.84 2.275 Biological Conservation 42 (1.66) 1,528 36.38 3.985 Environmental Management 35 (1.38) 581 16.60 1.857 Biodiversity and Conservation 35 (1.38) 835 23.86 2.258 International Journal of Sustainable
Development and World Ecology 35 (1.38) 199 5.69 1.609
Environmental Conservation 34 (1.34) 971 28.56 2.235 Ocean & Coastal Management 31 (1.22) 283 9.13 1.696 PLOS One 29 (1.15) 256 8.83 3.057 Total 2,531 26,373 Average 10.42
Note. TP = total publications; TC = total citations; TC/TP = average citations per publication; IF = impact factor.
Table 2. Contribution of the Top 10 Territories/Countries During 1990–2016.
Country TP TP R (%) SP R (%) CP R (%) FA R (%) RP R (%)
USA 646 1 (25.50) 1 (16.12) 1 (9.40) 1 (20.9) 1 (19.44) China 361 2 (14.30) 2 (12.45) 6 (1.82) 2 (13.47) 2 (8.46) UK 239 3 (9.44) 4 (4.58) 2 (4.86) 4 (6.24) 4 (6.16) Australia 219 4 (8.65) 3 (6.01) 3 (2.65) 3 (6.91) 3 (6.36) Canada 147 5 (5.81) 5 (3.48) 5 (2.33) 5 (4.78) 5 (4.23) South Africa 124 6 (4.90) 6 (2.53) 4 (2.37) 6 (3.75) 6 (3.44) Brazil 78 7 (3.08) 7 (2.33) 14 (0.75) 7 (2.57) 7 (2.29) Malaysia 62 8 (2.45) 10 (1.82) 16 (0.63) 10 (2.02) 14 (1.42) Spain 61 9 (2.41) 14 (1.07) 7 (1.34) 12 (1.74) 10 (1.82) Taiwan 60 10 (2.37) 8 (2.21) 42 (0.16) 8 (2.33) 8 (2.09)
Note. TP = total publication; R = rank; % = share in publication; SP = single country publication; CP = internationally collaborative publication; FA = publication with first author; RP = publication with corresponding author.
Liu and Li 5
finding indicates that such institutions were successful in international cooperation; Griffith University, James Cook University, the University of Otago, and the University of British Columbia have stronger ability for independent research.
Furthermore, to visualize the worldwide distribution of ecotourism-related publications, authors’ affiliations were geo-coded using CiteSpace, with the resulting worldwide geographic distribution plotted using red dots, as shown in Figure 2.
Seen from the research institutions worldwide in Figure 2, they were mainly located in most areas of Europe and the south part of Northern America, followed by eastern and southern Asia, central and southern America, southern Africa,
and the southeastern Oceania. Their distribution was concen- trated in two types of areas. One was the developed areas that housed a large number of academic institutions and had a strong sense of environmental protection. The other was the less developed areas which had advantaged ecotourism resources and urgently needed to be protected because of pov- erty, population pressure, and consciousness scarcity.
Keywords Analysis
Three categories of keywords, including topical keywords, case-related keywords, and research methods–related key- words, were analyzed to identify the characteristic of eco- tourism research.
Table 3. Contribution of the Top 10 Institutes During 1990–2016.
Institute TP TP R (%) SP R (%) CP R (%) FP R (%) RP R (%)
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China 31 1 (1.89) 2 (0.97) 1 (4.43) 2 (1.22) 1 (1.46) Griffith University, Australia 26 2 (1.58) 1 (1.8) 50 (0.49) 1 (1.46) 61 (0.12) University of Florida, USA 19 3 (1.16) 5 (0.6) 2 (2.71) 3 (1.04) 3 (0.55) Texas A&M University, USA 18 4 (1.1) 5 (0.6) 3 (2.46) 4 (0.85) 2 (0.73) James Cook University, Australia 11 5 (0.67) 3 (0.82) — (—) 5 (0.67) — (—) Utah State University, USA 10 6 (0.61) 51 (0.22) 4 (1.72) 16 (0.37) 8 (0.37) University of Otago, New Zealand 10 6 (0.61) 5 (0.6) 50 (0.49) 7 (0.49) 46 (0.12) University of British Columbia, Canada 10 6 (0.61) 4 (0.67) 194 (0.25) 6 (0.55) 160 (0.06) Cornell University, USA 10 6 (0.61) 43 (0.3) 8 (1.48) 16 (0.37) 4 (0.43) University of Washington, USA 9 10 (0.55) 124 (0.15) 4 (1.72) 28 (0.3) 7 (0.37)
Note. TP = total publication; R = rank; % = share in publication; SP = single institution publication; CP = inter-institution collaborative publication; FP = publication with first author; RP = publication with corresponding author.
Figure 2. Global geographical distribution of authors of ecotourism-related publications during 1990–2016.
6 SAGE Open
Analysis of topical keywords. A keyword network diagram of 43 of ecotourism’s most frequently used topical keywords (cited more than 10 times during 1990–2016) was prepared with Gephi 0.9.1. As shown in Figure 3, the larger the point is, the more times the respective keyword was used. The lines show the co-occurrence relationship of every keyword pair, with thicker lines corresponding to higher frequencies of co-occurrence.
Ecotourism was undoubtedly the greatest point in the cen- ter. Conservation was the second largest point closely related to ecotourism and was presently in the process of becoming the most important research topic in ecotourism. The key- words seen near the center, protected area, sustainable, tour- ism, sustainable development, sustainable ecotourism, and biodiversity, illustrated that ecotourism and sustainable development had a strong relationship and occur together in theoretical research.
The keywords at the periphery…
SAGE Open April-June 2020: 1 –12 © The Author(s) 2020 DOI: 10.1177/2158244020924052 journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo
Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of
the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Original Research
Introduction
Ecological environment pollution has become a difficult and restrictive factor of regional sustainable development (Zhang & Wen, 2008). With increasing awareness of envi- ronment protection, ecotourism has become a special inter- est tourism and considered as an effective way of achieving sustainable development (Buckley, 1994; Pforr, 2001; Ramos & Prideaux, 2014).The concept of ecotourism emerged in the 1980s to address the negative impacts of tra- ditional tourism, such as environmental damage and cultural erosion. Thus, ecotourism generally was considered to fall within sustainable, ecologically sustainable, environmen- tally appropriate, and environmentally responsible tourism (Farrell & Runyan, 1991; Sharpley & Duffy, 2006; Wight, 1993). The International Ecotourism Society (TIES), which was found in 1990, first proposed an authoritative definition of ecotourism, and after years of exploration, presently defined ecotourism as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education” (TIES, 2015).
In a span of over 30 years of development, a large number of studies of ecotourism from various aspects emerged worldwide, such as framework establishment (Fennell, 2001; Fleischer, 2010; Ross et al., 1999), function and valuation (He et al., 2008; D. N. B. Lee & Snepenger, 1992; Wendy & Jim, 2012), environmental capacity (Sagoff, 1995; Kang & Xu, 2010; Shi et al., 2015), community participation (S. Jones, 2005; Scheyvens, 1999; Stem et al., 2003; Stronza & Gordillo, 2008), ecotourists’ intention and behavior (Russell, 1995; Shamsub & Lebel, 2012; Teeroovengadum, 2019), and so on. Being an effective way to realize sustainable tourism, ecotourism has been studied not only in various types of
924052 SGOXXX10.1177/2158244020924052SAGE OpenLiu and Li research-article20202020
1School of Economics and Management, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, P.R. China 2Minjiang Teachers College, Fuzhou, P.R. China 3Nanning Normal University, P.R. China
Corresponding Author: Wan-Yi Li, Key Laboratory of Beibu Gulf Environment Change and Resources Utilization of Ministry of Education, and Guangxi Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Intelligent Simulation, Nanning Normal University, Nanning 530001, P.R. China. Email: [email protected]
Ecotourism Research Progress: A Bibliometric Analysis During 1990–2016
Shaoai Liu1,2 and Wan-Yi Li3
Abstract 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.
Keywords ecotourism, bibliometric analysis, dynamic changes, sustainable tourism
2 SAGE Open
natural areas but also in different countries and regions. There were many publications based on ecotourism, and the trends of ecotourism research have received continuous attention (Das & Chatterjee, 2015; Liu et al., 2013; Nzengy’a, 2004; Sun & Gao, 2012; Weaver & Lawton, 2007). However, a comprehensive statistical review of global ecotourism research was not reported.
In this study, bibliometric analysis was used to quantita- tively and qualitatively investigate the global research trend of ecotourism during the period from 1990 to 2016. Specifically, this article aims at identifying (a) the general patterns for document type, publication output, journals and contribution of territories/countries and institutions in eco- tourism research; (b) the overall development of the research topics, the geographic areas of case study, and the research methods in ecotourism; (c) the characteristics of dynamic changes of ecotourism research at developing stages. This study might visualize features of global ecotourism research that may serve as a potential guide for future studies.
Materials and Methods
The Web of Science (WoS), developed by Thomson Reuters Inc., is regarded as a comprehensive research platform. WoS has been used as literature database for bibliometric analysis of tourism research (Schubert & Glänzel, 2007). Therefore, WoS is chosen as the source database for bibliometric analy- sis in this study.
The Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) are commonly used databases, covering influential journals (Gu, 2004). In addition, the Conference Proceedings Citation Index, including Conference Proceedings Citation Index – Science (CPCI-S) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), revealing emerg- ing trends and new ideas before they appear in journals, should not be neglected. Therefore, the strings “ecotourism” (or) “eco-tourism” (or) “ecological tourism” were used to search titles, abstracts, and keywords of the documents published between 1990 and 2016 in the database of SCI-E, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, and CPCI-SSH. Since the first authoritative definition of ecotourism was proposed in 1990, our bibliomet- ric analysis began at this time. All publication used in this work was downloaded on March 2, 2017. A total of 2,531 records were obtained. The documents were analyzed accord- ing to document type, country or territory and institutions affiliation of authors, study country/territory, and keywords.
The bibliometric indicators, including document type, pub- lication year, distribution of publications by country or terri- tory, journal, research institution, international collaboration, and keywords, were imported into Microsoft Excel 2013 and then used for further analysis. The affiliations of authors were geocoded by CiteSpace 5.0.R2 and the worldwide geographic distribution of authors was plotted using ArcGIS 10.2. Co-word analysis, based on social network analysis (SNA),
was employed in this study to reveal the hotspots of ecotour- ism research. Among the data obtained, only 1,672 records could be used to analyze the co-word network, as 606 publica- tions did not include keywords. The author names and key- words were extracted from the 1,672 records. To prevent the results from being distorted by words having synonyms, each keyword’s synonyms were combined. Ultimately, a total of 4,138 keywords, 60 of which are used in more than 10 articles, were divided into three categories: topical keywords (related to the research content and subject), case-related keywords (related to the geographic areas being studied), and research methods–related keywords (related to research and data analy- sis methods). Based on this, the topical keywords used Gephi 0.9.1 for co-word analysis and Ucinet 6 for clustering analysis. The case-related keywords were processed using the inverse distance weight interpolation technique in ArcGIS 10.2, while the research methods–related keywords were analyzed by computing the descriptive statistics.
Results and Discussion
Document Type
In this study, 12 document types were identified from the total of 2,531 publication records during the last 27 years. Among them, article (1,582 records) was the most frequently used document type, accounting for 62.50% of total publica- tions and was followed far behind by conference proceedings (696, or 27.50%), book reviews (91, or 3.60%), reviews (73, or 1.56%), editorials (33, or 1.30%), and meeting abstracts (27, or 1.07%). Other document types, for example, note, let- ter, news item, book chapter, correction, book review, and poetry, accounted for less than 1%.
Characteristics of Published Output
The annual amount distributions of all documents and the top three document types related to ecotourism during the last 27 years are counted and displayed in Figure 1.
The number of annual publications showed a rapid growth, increasing from 2 in 1990 to 196 in 2016, and a fluc- tuating growth with two fast-growing nodes appearing in 1996 and 2007. Examining the trends of different document types, the growth curve of articles is the most closely aligned with that of the total document count.
According to a standard practice in bibliometrics (De Bellis, 2009), only articles were selected among all publica- tions for analysis of research output features. Specifically, 1,673 articles accounting for 66% of the total literature were analyzed. A growth trend was apparent in the annual counts of published articles, authors, and cited references. The annual publication count increased from 2 in 1990 to 196 in 2016, representing an annual growth rate of 96%, while the fraction of authors writing about ecotourism grew by approximately 322.5% between 1990 and 2016, demonstrating that an
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increasing number of scholars were interested in ecotourism. Similarly, the average number of cited references per ecotour- ism publication, numbering 5 in 1990, rose steadily to 50 in 2016. The continuous increase of publications and references was illustrative of a positive growth trend.
Combined with the annual changes in publications caused by the social activities of ecotourism, the total development was divided into three stages.
The initial stage: 1990–1999. The concept of ecotourism was put forward but did not draw much attention from 1990 to 1993. The first definition of ecotourism was proposed by TIES in 1990, attracting extensive attention. With the pro- posal of a sustainable development strategy by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, much more attention was given to envi- ronmental protection in tourism development (Buckley, 1994; Goodwin, 1996). As an effective way of sustainable tourism development, ecotourism was promoted both in the- ory and practice (Masberg & Morales, 1999; Ross et al., 1999; Scheyvens, 1999). With rising social interest, the quantity of academic research related to ecotourism has also increased. This stage peaked in 1996, when growth in research output slowed down. During the following years, the annual publication count of documents remained stable at approximately 40 until 1999. As this period was character- ized by a low cumulative output (fewer than 250 publica- tions), it was named the initial stage of ecotourism research.
The rapid growth stage: 2000–2009. After a decade of devel- opment, the concept of ecotourism had been widely accepted. It could be said that ecotourism research entered a rapid growth stage since 2000. Beginning in 2002, the year
designated the International Year of Ecotourism (IYE), research was being conducted worldwide, with more in- depth exploration aiming at an accurate understanding of ecotourism (Fennell, 2001; Weaver, 2005). In addition, the International Ecotourism Standard, another important achievement of the IYE, was regarded as a complete and practical guide to ecotourism activities. Promoted globally, ecotourism has drawn greater attention from academic researchers. Under this background, the publication output related to ecotourism experienced small fluctuations between 2001 and 2004 and showed a rapid growth beginning in 2005. By 2009, it was nearly 2 times more than 2005, as ecotourism commenced in the Third World (Chok et al., 2007; Mowforth & Munt, 2008).
The steady growth stage: 2010–2016. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) celebrated World Tourism Day 2010 under the theme “Tourism and Biodiver- sity,” emphasizing a close relationship between tourism and environmental protection, promoting the international spread of the concept of ecotourism. Driven by this, the annual pub- lication count stayed in the peak amount since 2009, exceed- ing 200 in 2012 and subsequently experiencing stable growth.
Journals Rankings
Table 1 shows the statistics for the top 10 journals most active in ecotourism during 1990–2016, including the total counts of publications and citations, the average number of citations per publication, and the impact factors.
The top three most prolific journals were all in the field of tourism, accounting for more than 10% of the total publica- tion count. Among the top three, Tourism Management with
Figure 1. Annual amount of all documents and the top three document types related to ecotourism during the last 27 years.
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the highest impact factor of 3.14 boasts the highest total pub- lication count of 102, as well as the total count of 2,800 cita- tions. It was noteworthy that journals ranked between 4 and 9 by total publication count were in the field of environmen- tal science rather than tourism. Among such environmental science journals, Biological Conservation has the highest impact factor of 3.985 among the top 10 journals, as well as the highest average number of citations per publication (36.38). The focus areas of the top 10 published journals indicate that ecotourism not only was an important part of tourism research but also receives much attention from envi- ronmental science aspect.
Contribution of Territories/Countries and Institutions
The contribution of the top 10 territories/countries and research institutions from 1990 to 2016 is shown in Tables 2 and 3, respectively.
As seen in Table 2, the United States (646) accounts for the largest number of publications, followed by China (361), the United Kingdom (239), Australia (219), and Canada (147). Whereas in the terms of international cooperation, China, Brazil, Malaysia, and Taiwan ranked much lower than that of their total publication. Among the top 10 high-yield- ing countries, the rankings, resulting from considering the publications’ first authors and those resulting from consider- ing co-authors, were nearly identical.
Seen in Table 3, it was worth mentioning that, at 5, the United States has the largest share of the top 10 most prolific research institutions, followed by Australia (2). Among the research institutions, the contribution of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was the largest at 31 publications, fol- lowed by Griffith University (26) and University of Florida (19). Certain institutions, Utah State University, Cornell University, and the University of Washington, though ranked in the top 10 by the total publication count, they ranked far lower by counts of single institution-authored papers. This
Table 1. Top 10 Most Active Journals in Ecotourism During 1990–2016.
Journal title TP (%) TC TC/TP IF
Tourism Management 102 (4.03) 2,800 27.45 3.14 Journal of Sustainable Tourism 85 (3.36) 1,153 13.56 2.48 Annals of Tourism Research 81 (3.20) 1,769 21.84 2.275 Biological Conservation 42 (1.66) 1,528 36.38 3.985 Environmental Management 35 (1.38) 581 16.60 1.857 Biodiversity and Conservation 35 (1.38) 835 23.86 2.258 International Journal of Sustainable
Development and World Ecology 35 (1.38) 199 5.69 1.609
Environmental Conservation 34 (1.34) 971 28.56 2.235 Ocean & Coastal Management 31 (1.22) 283 9.13 1.696 PLOS One 29 (1.15) 256 8.83 3.057 Total 2,531 26,373 Average 10.42
Note. TP = total publications; TC = total citations; TC/TP = average citations per publication; IF = impact factor.
Table 2. Contribution of the Top 10 Territories/Countries During 1990–2016.
Country TP TP R (%) SP R (%) CP R (%) FA R (%) RP R (%)
USA 646 1 (25.50) 1 (16.12) 1 (9.40) 1 (20.9) 1 (19.44) China 361 2 (14.30) 2 (12.45) 6 (1.82) 2 (13.47) 2 (8.46) UK 239 3 (9.44) 4 (4.58) 2 (4.86) 4 (6.24) 4 (6.16) Australia 219 4 (8.65) 3 (6.01) 3 (2.65) 3 (6.91) 3 (6.36) Canada 147 5 (5.81) 5 (3.48) 5 (2.33) 5 (4.78) 5 (4.23) South Africa 124 6 (4.90) 6 (2.53) 4 (2.37) 6 (3.75) 6 (3.44) Brazil 78 7 (3.08) 7 (2.33) 14 (0.75) 7 (2.57) 7 (2.29) Malaysia 62 8 (2.45) 10 (1.82) 16 (0.63) 10 (2.02) 14 (1.42) Spain 61 9 (2.41) 14 (1.07) 7 (1.34) 12 (1.74) 10 (1.82) Taiwan 60 10 (2.37) 8 (2.21) 42 (0.16) 8 (2.33) 8 (2.09)
Note. TP = total publication; R = rank; % = share in publication; SP = single country publication; CP = internationally collaborative publication; FA = publication with first author; RP = publication with corresponding author.
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finding indicates that such institutions were successful in international cooperation; Griffith University, James Cook University, the University of Otago, and the University of British Columbia have stronger ability for independent research.
Furthermore, to visualize the worldwide distribution of ecotourism-related publications, authors’ affiliations were geo-coded using CiteSpace, with the resulting worldwide geographic distribution plotted using red dots, as shown in Figure 2.
Seen from the research institutions worldwide in Figure 2, they were mainly located in most areas of Europe and the south part of Northern America, followed by eastern and southern Asia, central and southern America, southern Africa,
and the southeastern Oceania. Their distribution was concen- trated in two types of areas. One was the developed areas that housed a large number of academic institutions and had a strong sense of environmental protection. The other was the less developed areas which had advantaged ecotourism resources and urgently needed to be protected because of pov- erty, population pressure, and consciousness scarcity.
Keywords Analysis
Three categories of keywords, including topical keywords, case-related keywords, and research methods–related key- words, were analyzed to identify the characteristic of eco- tourism research.
Table 3. Contribution of the Top 10 Institutes During 1990–2016.
Institute TP TP R (%) SP R (%) CP R (%) FP R (%) RP R (%)
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China 31 1 (1.89) 2 (0.97) 1 (4.43) 2 (1.22) 1 (1.46) Griffith University, Australia 26 2 (1.58) 1 (1.8) 50 (0.49) 1 (1.46) 61 (0.12) University of Florida, USA 19 3 (1.16) 5 (0.6) 2 (2.71) 3 (1.04) 3 (0.55) Texas A&M University, USA 18 4 (1.1) 5 (0.6) 3 (2.46) 4 (0.85) 2 (0.73) James Cook University, Australia 11 5 (0.67) 3 (0.82) — (—) 5 (0.67) — (—) Utah State University, USA 10 6 (0.61) 51 (0.22) 4 (1.72) 16 (0.37) 8 (0.37) University of Otago, New Zealand 10 6 (0.61) 5 (0.6) 50 (0.49) 7 (0.49) 46 (0.12) University of British Columbia, Canada 10 6 (0.61) 4 (0.67) 194 (0.25) 6 (0.55) 160 (0.06) Cornell University, USA 10 6 (0.61) 43 (0.3) 8 (1.48) 16 (0.37) 4 (0.43) University of Washington, USA 9 10 (0.55) 124 (0.15) 4 (1.72) 28 (0.3) 7 (0.37)
Note. TP = total publication; R = rank; % = share in publication; SP = single institution publication; CP = inter-institution collaborative publication; FP = publication with first author; RP = publication with corresponding author.
Figure 2. Global geographical distribution of authors of ecotourism-related publications during 1990–2016.
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Analysis of topical keywords. A keyword network diagram of 43 of ecotourism’s most frequently used topical keywords (cited more than 10 times during 1990–2016) was prepared with Gephi 0.9.1. As shown in Figure 3, the larger the point is, the more times the respective keyword was used. The lines show the co-occurrence relationship of every keyword pair, with thicker lines corresponding to higher frequencies of co-occurrence.
Ecotourism was undoubtedly the greatest point in the cen- ter. Conservation was the second largest point closely related to ecotourism and was presently in the process of becoming the most important research topic in ecotourism. The key- words seen near the center, protected area, sustainable, tour- ism, sustainable development, sustainable ecotourism, and biodiversity, illustrated that ecotourism and sustainable development had a strong relationship and occur together in theoretical research.
The keywords at the periphery…
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