A literature review of sports tourism research: knowledge graph analysis based on CiteSpace visualization

Abstract

ABSTRACT The integration of sports and tourism has produced many research results, but the emergence of new disciplines has also brought about confusion in academic context. Using bibliometric analysis method, this paper analyzes the knowledge graph of 379 articles on ‘sports tourism’ collected from 2013 to 2021. It is found that the research hotspot of sports tourism mainly focuses on the concept of sports tourism, the theory of sports tourism, the case study of sports tourism, and the scale of sports tourism industry. From the branch evolution path analysis, it is found that sports tourism research mainly focuses on tourism nostalgia research, sports tourism risk perception research, sports tourism event development, sports tourism sustainable development and so on. Finally, the future research trend is prospected reasonably.