Evolution of sustainable development goals research in tourism sector. A bibliometric review

Abstract

Since the United Nations’ approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the tourism industry has been identified as one that causes the greatest environmental deterioration. This has led companies to devise strategies for the management of sustainable practices, which have become one of the main subjects that must be addressed in the literature, making it necessary to open lines of study. The objective of this work, is to identify the intellectual structure of the research field of the SDGs in the tourism sector, using a bibliometric analysis that allows the identification and analysis of the relationships between the topics that have had the greatest impact on the construction of the knowledge base of this discipline. This analysis started with a search on the theme of sustainable development goals and tourism on the Web of Science (WoS) platform between 2013 and 2022. The resulting data was processed with Bibliometrix, allowing for an analysis of indicators, number of articles, and also productivity by country, author and journal. In addition, the nodes (different themes) and clusters (trends) of the field of study were identified, highlighting the main research topics. In recent decades, SDGs has expanded into various sectors especially in the tourism sector, recognizing the importance of sustainable development when developing business activity, using available resources in an economically but also environmentally efficient way. In this sense, the topics stand out: framework, economic-grow, gender and ecotourism.