Twenty years of red tourism research: A systematic literature review using the theories-contexts-characteristics-methods framework

Abstract

Previous red tourism reviews fall short of evaluating the theoretical foundations, contexts, characteristics and methods of existing literature. Through employing the Theories-Contexts-Characteristics-Methods framework, this paper is the first systematic review that synthesized 279 CSSCI Chinese-written and 30 English-written empirical research articles. It provides a snapshot of the state-of-the-art of red tourism scholarship to highlight extant knowledge gaps. Results show that research questions on red tourism exhibit a dominant managerial focus over the past 20 years. Most of the studies failed to address core attributes that make red heritage distinctive, including identity, emotions, memories, sense of place and power dynamics. This review also shows that the theoretical foundation of red tourism research is weak and fragmented. Most deployed theories are human-centric, which marginalizes red heritage and its endogenous attributes. Furthermore, current red tourism literature principally examines general domestic tourists and tangible heritage sites. Residents who are carriers of red memories and cultural practices, inbound tourists, adolescents and intangible red cultural heritage and traditions were overlooked. Drawing from critical heritage studies, this review contributes to red tourism and heritage tourism studies by suggesting new theoretical lenses (e.g., storytelling and post-anthropocentrism). Novel research questions that go beyond the current overreliance on specific research contexts are provided, complemented with a list of possible new methods.