Knowledge Mapping of Tourism Footprint: A Bibliometric Review Based on CiteSpace

Abstract

Sustainable tourism plays an important role in enhancing economic benefits, promoting the transformation of development methods, and strengthening international communication. And the tourism footprint is gaining research attention as an essential means for evaluating the sustainability of tourism. However, there have been few attempts to draw a scientific investigation map of the tourism footprint. With the purpose of reviewing systematically the research status and providing ideas for future research in this field, this study conducts a scientometric analysis of 517 academic publications on tourism footprint with CiteSpace. We find that tourism footprint is gaining attention and promotion on a worldwide scale which is becoming a popular multidisciplinary study area. China, the United States, and England have the most productive institutions. There is a marked trend of cross-fertilization of research in this field with other disciplines. And we summarize three predominant research themes: the economic impacts of tourism development, the assessment of tourism footprint, and the promotion of sustainable tourism. Developing a consensus model for tourism footprint accounting and establishing a dynamic monitoring mechanism may get more attention in the future.