Sport Tourism Competitiveness: A Systematic Review of Relevant Literature From 2012 to 2022

Abstract

Sport tourism is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the tourism industry worldwide and has received increasing attention from scholars in the last decades. In this context, literature reviews have been written analysing various aspects, including factors influencing sport tourism competitiveness. However, sport tourism competitiveness in general has not been reviewed to date. This paper applies a systematic literature review to research sport tourism competitiveness articles published in the Scopus database from 2012 to 2022. It was found that quantitative studies are prevalent with the survey as the main method. Additionally, the multidisciplinary character of sport tourism studies has been confirmed, with developing economies, especially China, being the most researched territories. Winter sports as an activity and its impacts continues to be the most researched among scholars, nevertheless, our research revealed that water sports are also of interest, and active sports practised in natural environments in general had more attention than sport events. Finally, we observed that the use of the concept of sport tourism is still problematic and requires further clarity.

Keywords

• sport tourism
• systematic literature review
• competitiveness
• research methods
• research methodologies