---
title: "Sustainable tourism research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “sustainable tourism” appeared in 559 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in tourism and hospitality (397), economics (54) and operations research (51)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/sustainable-tourism
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/sustainable-tourism.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “sustainable tourism” appeared in 559 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in tourism and hospitality (397), economics (54) and operations research (51). (as of 2026-11-04)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-04T00:03:46+09:00
window: 2026-10-06 to 2026-11-04
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “sustainable tourism”

Research on “sustainable tourism” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “sustainable tourism” appeared in 559 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in tourism and hospitality (397), economics (54) and operations research (51).
- 85 of them were published in 2025, against 29 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were University of Surrey (15), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (13) and Nankai University (10).
- The journals publishing most of them were Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management (34), Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism (34) and Annals of Tourism Research (31).
- The most-cited of them is “A review of research into automation in tourism: Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Tourism” (Annals of Tourism Research, 2020), with 1,048 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 24 | 26 | 26 | 35 | 41 | 35 | 38 | 55 | 62 | 55 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 4 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 0 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 12 | 8 | 5 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 6 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 29 | 32 | 37 | 49 | 59 | 49 | 61 | 84 | 85 | 74 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-hospitality-and-tourism-management.md) | 34 |
| 2 | [Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-outdoor-recreation-and-tourism.md) | 34 |
| 3 | [Annals of Tourism Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-tourism-research.md) | 31 |
| 4 | [Tourism Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/tourism-management.md) | 31 |
| 5 | [Journal of Destination Marketing & Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-destination-marketing-management.md) | 23 |
| 6 | [Tourism Management Perspectives](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/tourism-management-perspectives.md) | 19 |
| 7 | [Information Technology & Tourism](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/information-technology-tourism.md) | 12 |
| 8 | [Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-tourism-research-empirical-insights.md) | 12 |
| 9 | [International Journal of Hospitality Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-hospitality-management.md) | 11 |
| 10 | [Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/transportation-research-part-a-policy-and-practice.md) | 9 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [University of Surrey](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-surrey.md) | 15 |
| 2 | [Hong Kong Polytechnic University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hong-kong-polytechnic-university.md) | 13 |
| 3 | [Nankai University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nankai-university.md) | 10 |
| 4 | [Sun Yat-sen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sun-yat-sen-university.md) | 9 |
| 5 | [The University of Queensland](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland.md) | 9 |
| 6 | [Chinese University of Hong Kong](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-university-of-hong-kong.md) | 8 |
| 7 | [University of Johannesburg](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/university-of-johannesburg.md) | 6 |
| 8 | [Hainan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hainan-university.md) | 5 |
| 9 | [Southeast University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southeast-university.md) | 5 |
| 10 | University of Split | 5 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 79 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 40 |
| 3 | Spain | 31 |
| 4 | United States | 31 |
| 5 | Australia | 26 |
| 6 | Hong Kong | 23 |
| 7 | Italy | 20 |
| 8 | France | 14 |
| 9 | India | 14 |
| 10 | Taiwan | 12 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | pro-environmental behavior | 30 |
| 2 | tourist behavior | 22 |
| 3 | [destination management](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/destination-management.md) | 19 |
| 4 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 17 |
| 5 | [environmental sustainability](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/environmental-sustainability.md) | 16 |
| 6 | nature-based tourism | 16 |
| 7 | tourism policy | 15 |
| 8 | overtourism | 14 |
| 9 | community-based tourism | 10 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,048 | 13.0 | [A review of research into automation in tourism: Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Tourism](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.102883) | [Annals of Tourism Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-tourism-research.md) | 2020-02-14 | Iis P. Tussyadiah |
| 2 | 903 | 12.9 | [Reviving tourism industry post-COVID-19: A resilience-based framework](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2020.100786) | [Tourism Management Perspectives](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/tourism-management-perspectives.md) | 2020-12-29 | Gagan Deep Sharma, Asha Thomas, Justin Paul |
| 3 | 515 | 4.8 | [Sustainable tourism: Sustaining tourism or something more?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2017.11.017) | [Tourism Management Perspectives](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/tourism-management-perspectives.md) | 2017-12-02 | Freya Higgins‐Desbiolles |
| 4 | 433 | 4.5 | [Values and ascribed responsibility to predict consumers' attitude and concern towards green hotel visit intention](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.11.021) | [Journal of Business Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-research.md) | 2018-11-22 | Vivek Kumar Verma, Bibhas Chandra, Sumit Kumar |
| 5 | 378 | 4.5 | [Stakeholder collaboration as a major factor for sustainable ecotourism development in developing countries](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2019.104024) | [Tourism Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/tourism-management.md) | 2019-11-27 | Amare Nega Wondirad, Denis Tolkach, Brian E. M. King |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “sustainable tourism”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/sustainable-tourism

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-sustainable-tourism,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “sustainable tourism”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/sustainable-tourism}},
  urldate = {2026-11-04},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).