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

In the quarter of a century since the release of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainable tourism has emerged as the dominant paradigm in tourism development. However, the debate, discourse, and criticism of this subfield of tourism research continues. To address such concerns the purpose of this paper is to explore trends and patterns in sustainable tourism research over the past 25 years. A 25-year bibliometric analysis was conducted for the four highest ranked journals in the tourism field. Results indicate that the growth in sustainable tourism research has been remarkable, with 492 papers published in these four journals and almost half of these in the last two years of the analysis. The largest proportion of papers published on sustainable tourism was case studies, empirical studies, and critical reviews. This study found that while the theoretical and methodological approaches appear to have matured over time, the subjects and themes in sustainable tourism research, with some exceptions, have remained constant. However, the field is clearly maturing with a move away from definitional and conceptual papers to papers focused on testing and applying theory through empirical research. 可持续旅游研究的趋势和模式：25年文献计量学的研究 自从布伦特兰在1987年发表他的报告25年后，可持续旅游在旅游业发展中已经作为主要范式出现。然而，旅游研究的分支仍然在批评，讨论和争辩这个理论。为了解决这个问题，这篇文章的目的是探索25年以来可持续旅游研究的趋势和模式，对四个在旅游研究中最著名的杂志进行了一个25年的文献计量分析。结果表明，可持续旅游研究的发展是显著的，有492篇文章在这四个杂志上发表并且几乎它们中的一半是在分析的近两年发表的。发表的文章中，占比最大的是案例研究，实证研究和评论回顾。这项研究发现虽然理论和方法论的方法已经逐渐成熟，可持续旅游研究的课题和主题像预期一样保持了稳定。然而，这个领域很明显地随着从定义和概念类文章通过实证研究向更关注检测和理论运用类文章转移中变的更加成熟