Analysis of Research Trends in Islands Tourism Using Bibliometrics and Text Mining

Abstract

After the 1950s, when have heightened interest in islands, the high interest in islands has affected research, and similar upward trends have continued in islands research that focuses on islands and tourism. It is no longer easy to even grasp the actual trends of research. This study intended to clarify research trends on islands tourism. The author collected all research papers which are searched using Web scraping with the keywords ‘Island’ and ‘Tourism’ on Science Direct. The research methods in this study are Bibliometrics and Text mining. Specifically, the author conducted four analyses, in order to clarify research trends in this study. First, the author conducted a Frequency analysis from Bibliometric point of view based on 6,967 papers from 1998 to 2021. As a result, it was clarified that annual amounts of research papers have changed to an increasing trend from 2005. Second, the author conducted a Correspondence analysis based on the top 60 most frequent words, and clarified the time-series changes from 1998 to 2021. As a result, research trends could be classified into five categories: ‘Development / Resources’, ‘Carrying Capacity / Sustainability’, ‘Risk / Disaster’, ‘Network’, and ‘Nature / Landscape’. Third, the author conducted a Cluster analysis based on the top 60 most frequent words, and summarized research trends into three clusters: ‘Tourists / Travel Destinations / Travel Experiences’, ‘Tourism Industry / Economic Growth’, and ‘Conservation / Development （SDGs） / Policy / Community’. Fourth, the author performed a Co-occurrence Network analysis based on the top 60 most frequent words, and classified the co-occurrences and relationships between the words into three categories: ‘Economic Revitalization / Regional Development and Related Policies’, ‘Behavior and Experiences of Individual Tourists’, and ‘Environmental Problems and Conservation’. Finally, based on the results of these analyses, the author concludes that research trends in islands tourism have shifted from ‘Development’ to ‘Economy’ of island regions, to ‘Nature Conservation’ since the mid-2010s, and from 2018, it was concluded that there are trends to focus on ‘SDGs’.