1 Introduction
Nature-based resources and environment are the indispensable preconditions and material bases for tourism activities and tourism development. Similarly, the pleasant environment, specific scenery and landscapes in the tourism destinations are also major determinants to attract tourists
[1]. In the early stage of tourism development, people paid attention to the economic benefits brought by tourism, but neglected the possible negative effects and the long-term sustainable development of scenic spots. In the past discussion and academic research on tourism activities, scholars have put forward many constructive views to establish a framework that could consider natural ecological environment and maintain the balance between local people's life and tourism activities. Among them, the proposal and practice of "ecotourism" and "sustainable tourism" have become the focus of protecting regional natural and cultural ecosystems, which is an important way to increase the economic benefits of local residents while ensuring the sustainable development of the region
[2-8].
With the enhancement of public environmental awareness, esearchers have carried out exploratory research on various impacts of tourism on the environment including the ocean, biodiversity, land, natural resource, etc.
[9-13], which made tourism practitioners and scholars consider the future development direction of tourism and try to put forward effective approaches to solve the environmental problems in tourism, such as environmental management and control of resource use. As a complicated systematical engineering involving the combination and intersection of multiple disciplines, environmental management in tourism lies in identifying environmental problems in tourism, analyzing influencing factors and proposing solutions, which has become a hot topic in tourism research at present.
In recent years, with insightful research results continuously emerging, environmental research in tourism is becoming an evolving knowledge field. Focusing on the international research progress and analyzing the characteristics of its knowledge evolution is of great significance to promote the follow-up research in this field. This paper uses the methods of knowledge network and bibliometrics that is more objective and comprehensive in revealing research trend to explore the environmental management in tourism. Using CiteSpace software, this study visually displays its development trend, basic characteristics, research strength, and research hotspots, in order to grasp the research progress of international academia on environmental management in tourism more systematically and comprehensively. The findings could provide reference for follow-up research and industrial practice.
On the basis of descriptive statistical analysis, co-citation network analysis and keyword analysis of 1558 articles collected and screened, this paper discussed the growth trend, hot spot evolution and important management implication of the researches in this field. In terms of publications and citations numbers, it showed a rising trend as a whole, and the disciplines to which the research belonged appeared obviously interdisciplinary. The main research directions focused on the environmental management of coastal tourism areas, water management and environmental management system of accommodation industry, and the relationship between tourists and other stakeholders' environmental perception and behavior of tourism destinations. For each of the topic, we summarize the status quo and management implications. The hotspots in the future may be the waste management of protected areas and the study on the competitive advantage of enterprises through environmental responsible behaviors.
The second section describes the methods, research process and data used in this paper. The results will be presented in the third section, and we explain the current growth trend of the literature in this field, the status of influential journals, institutions and authors, and analysis of citations, co-citations and research hotspots through bibliometrics and network analysis. Finally, the study discussed and concluded the research, including the limitations of the paper and suggestions for the future research direction.
2 Methodology
2.1 Bibliometric Methods
Bibliometrics is a quantitative analysis method based on mathematics and statistics
[14], which regards the literature system and various external characteristics of literature as the research objects. Through the analysis and processing of keywords, author's characteristics, publishing sources and citations, bibliometrics could comparatively accurately describe, evaluate and predict the research hotspots, development trend and dynamic changes in the research field. As an important branch and analytical approach of information science, it has been applied in many fields by scholars. Zhang, et al.
[15] explored a quantitative research method to evaluate the research trends of volatile organic compounds by bibliometrics through the relevant literature in SCI database, and illustrate the changes of research hotspots in this field and the cooperation between scientific institutions and countries. Ferreira, et al.
[16] distinguished the concepts of strategic entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship using co-citation literature analysis and multivariate statistical analysis technology. They discuss the future research direction of strategic management and emphasize the importance of combining traditional strategic management perspective with emerging research focus. Using the visualization of VOSviewer program, the study maps the literature of sustainability and tourism graphically, specially taking income and employment into account
[17]. Through co-occurrence of keywords, co-authorship and co-citation analysis, it reveals the trend of tourism sustainability and suggests some development polices to policy makers and practitioners.
Although bibliometrics has been widely applied in most disciplines, it has not yet been employed in the literature study of environmental governance and management in tourism. Environmental protection and pollution reduction are crucial to achieve the sustainable development of tourism. It is of great theoretical and practical significance to clarify the research focus of the existing literature and reveal the future research trend using scientific bibliometric methods. With the help of Citespace software, this study applies bibliometric analysis on the literature of environmental governance and management in the field of tourism. Citespace is a visualization software which can present the evolution process of a research field. The structure and distribution of scientific knowledge can be visualized on the knowledge map through different approaches such as co-citation analysis, co-author analysis and keywords burst analysis
[18]. This paper illustrates the emerging, development and future research trend of environmental management in tourism according to the software analysis results and archive material.
2.2 Data
This study focuses on the core documents of environmental governance, environmental management and tourism for comprehensive review and analysis. Figure 1 presents the process of data collection and analysis in this research.
Figure 1 Procedures for collection and analysis of environmental management and tourism literature |
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Literature retrieval Firstly, we choose SCI, SSCI and CPCI-S database in Web of Science Core Collection as the primary sources. The search of documents in the database is carried out using the following statement: TS= ("environmental management" or "environmental governance" or "environmental protection" or "environmental policy" or "natural resource management" or "water management" or "land management" or "forest management" or "waste management" or "pollution control") and TS= ("tourism"). The span of time is from 1981 to 2020 and the types of documents are restricted to articles and proceeding papers. The basic search results include 1795 records, which serves as an initial sample of this study.
Data filtering In the initial samples, there are a few materials which are irrelevant to the research topic of this study. Therefore, we have made a detailed screening of 1795 records by limiting the research filed to relevant research directions, such as environment science, tourism and management. After eliminating duplication of the literature by Citespace, the remaining 1558 valid records are taken as the final research sample.
Data processing The descriptive statistical analysis are carried out for the whole sample. This study subsequently conduct the co-citation analysis, the cooperative network analysis of institutions, and keywords burst analysis in order to visualize scientific knowledge maps.
Summarizing We read and summarize the highly cited and highly co-cited documents in the sample in detail, and extract the effective information, theories, views, comments and implications about the environmental governance in tourism. Finally, the research provides the conclusion and recommendation by combining sample data analysis and archival materials analysis.
3 Results
3.1 Publications and Citations
Through the number of papers published and citations in the field, we could see the growth of knowledge and research boom. Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the development of tourism and the growing attention paid to the ecological environment, the discussion on the policies and measures of environmental governance and management in tourism has gradually increased. From 1985 (the first record appearing) to 2000, the number of documents did not increase significantly. Many scholars have concentrated on environmental issues of tourism since 2001. Therefore, the study calculates the number of annual literature publications and citations from 2001 to 2020 which is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Numbers of Publications and Citations from 2001 to 2020 |
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By further in-depth analysis of the number of papers and research contents, the research process in this field can be roughly divided into three stages according to the growth rate and trend. The first stage is from 2001 to 2009, during which the number of papers published increased evidently, but the number of citations was still at a low level. At the beginning of the 21st century, some researchers had realized the impact of natural environmental problems on social and economic activities. At this stage, the research content in this field is mainly about environmental and resource problems, such as biological invasion, climate change and the impact of over exploitation of resources on tourism
[19-22]. The number of publications and citations was relatively small because the research in this direction was still in its infancy. However, with the growing emphasis of tourism industry and scholars on environmental problems, the relevant research has shown an obvious growth trend.
The second phase is from 2010 to 2014, and the annual number of papers is basically stable during this period, with an average of 69 papers per year. Meanwhile, the citation frequency of related articles increased greatly from 412 in 2009 to 1458 in 2014. The research contents of the literature are diversified, mainly including ecosystem services and tourism
[23, 24], sustainable tourism policy
[25], corporate social responsibility and environmental management practices of tourism enterprises and hotels
[26-28], and the relationship between tourism development and environmental management over the phase
[29, 30]. At this stage, the number of papers published each year has not increased or decreased obviously, but the specific contents of the research have shown characteristics of diversification and interdisciplinary. In addition to the environmental problems widely discussed in the previous stage, there were more studies on the environmental management of tourism and hotel industry.
Both the number of published papers and the number of citations has increased significantly at the third stage (from 2015 to 2020) with more than 100 articles published every year. During this time, 178 papers were published in 2020, a definite growth of 169.7% compared with 2014; The citations also increased significantly, from 1458 in 2014 to 4617 in 2020. The remarkable growth trend in the number of publications and citations during this phase illustrated that the research in this field had attracted more and more attention, primarily because of the continuous growth of academic scientific research teams and the increase of environmental management practice in the process of tourism development. Moreover, in line with the increasing attention of tourism and hotel industry to environmental performance and the green development requirements of government, many scholars and researchers from different perspectives put forward analysis approaches and suggestions in tourism development and environmental governance, management, and policy making
[31-33]. Overall, the research in this field has entered the current stage of rapid development from steady growth, indicating that this field has the potential to become the key direction of tourism research in the future.
3.2 Research Areas
There are many subjects and research directions involved in the literature, and the situation of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary cooperation is relatively extensive. Figure 3 shows the proportion of different subjects involved in the 1558 documents (the classification of subject categories of articles has a certain repetition rate). The papers concentrate on the field of "Environmental science" and "Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism". Followed by the articles in "Green sustainable science and technology" and "Ecology", accounting for 16.73% and 14.12% respectively. "Water resources management" (e.g., water science, ocean and coastal management) is also an important research direction in tourism and environmental management, and the number of related articles accounts for 8.21%. The types of articles belonging to "Management", "Economics" and "Regional urban plannin" comprise more than 5%.
Figure 3 Research Areas and Proportion |
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3.3 Influenced Journals
Research papers in this field have been published in a variety of journals of tourism and environmental studies, which provide researchers with a wide range of perspectives and the extension and application of basic theories. Table 1 shows the top 10 most influential journals ranked by the number of articles published.
Table 1 Top10 Influenced Journals |
| Journals | Amount | Proportion | 5-year impact factor |
| Sustainability | 76 | 4.84% | 2.798 |
| Journal of Sustainable Tourism | 58 | 3.69% | 4.664 |
| Journal of Cleaner Production | 37 | 2.35% | 7.491 |
| Tourism Management | 37 | 2.35% | 9.238 |
| Ocean & Coastal Management | 30 | 1.91% | 2.972 |
| Journal of Coastal Research | 27 | 1.72% | 1.112 |
| Environmental Management | 25 | 1.59% | 2.810 |
| Land Use Policy | 19 | 1.21% | 4.151 |
| Environmental Monitoring and Assessment | 17 | 1.08% | 2.273 |
| Journal of Environmental Management | 16 | 1.02% | 5.708 |
Among the 1558 papers, Sustainability has the largest number of articles, accounting for 76 (4.84%). This journal mainly focuses on the development of sustainable science and technology, and the reason for the large number of papers is that it has broad topics and a quantity of annual articles published. Journal of Sustainable Tourism has 58 articles related, which is an important journal of tourism and sustainable development (5-year impact factor=4.664). In addition, 37 articles were published in Journal of Cleaner Production and Tourism Management respectively, and their 5-year impact factors were also very high, reaching 7.491 and 9.238 separately. Other categories of journals, such as Environmental science (Environmental Management, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, and Journal of Environmental Management), ocean and coastal management (Ocean & Coastal Management, and Journal of Coastal Research), and land management (Land Use Policy) also occupy a high proportion. The distribution of journals suggests that, environmental governance and management in tourism has been discussed in the fields of tourism, sustainable development science and environmental science, which indicates that the research has the characteristics of diversity and interdisciplinary and reflects the systematisms and complexity of its development.
3.4 Influenced Institutions
In terms of the publications' distribution of countries and regions, the sample literature is mainly from Europe, North America, East Asia and Oceania, which is in line with the distribution pattern of the world's economically and socio-culturally developed areas. Figure 4 shows the top 10 countries or regions with published papers. China has published the most articles in this field, with a total of 252 articles. The number of articles published by American scholars ranked second, accounting for 213 articles. Followed by Spain, England and Australia, with more than 100 papers.
Figure 4 Numbers of published articles in various countries/regions |
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Furthermore, this study does descriptive statistics and cooperation network analysis of institutions from 1558 documents. There are 21 institutions publishing more than 10 literatures, and Table 2 presents the number of articles published in this field by Top10 scientific research institutions and their locations.
Table 2 Top10 Influenced Institutions |
| Institutions | Amount | Proportion | Country/Region |
| Chinese Academy of Sciences | 35 | 2.23% | China |
| Griffith University | 24 | 1.53% | Australia |
| University of Botswana | 18 | 1.15% | Botswana |
| University of Johannesburg | 16 | 1.02% | South Africa |
| James Cook University | 15 | 0.95% | Australia |
| Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) | 14 | 0.89% | Spain |
| University of Oulu | 14 | 0.89% | Finland |
| Wageningen University | 14 | 0.89% | Netherlands |
| Nanjing University | 13 | 0.83% | China |
| State University System of Florida | 13 | 0.83% | USA |
Among the influenced institutions, Chinese Academy of Sciences published the most literature, accounting for 35. Scholars from this institution have extensive and profound insights in pollution control in tourist areas
[33, 34], environmental policy and in glacier and forest reserves
[35-37], and land use policy for rural areas
[38]. Griffith University in Australia has also made outstanding contributions and published 24 articles, focusing on ecotourism and sustainable tourism development
[39, 40], and the impact of environmental and resource management practices on corporate environmental performance and tourist satisfaction
[41-44]. In addition, University of Botswana and University of Johannesburg in Africa published 18 and 16 articles separately. There are 15 papers from James Cook University, and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), University of Oulu and Wageningen University in Europe published 14 papers respectively.
As shown in Figure 5, there is extensive cooperation among universities and research institutes in recent years. As the scientific research institution with the largest node radius, Chinese Academy of Sciences has close cooperation with institutions of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Normal University and Beijing Forestry University. Griffith University and James Cook University located in Australia have a number of collaborative papers. Furthermore, James Cook University and Cape Town University, Rhodes University in Africa, Oxford University and Exeter University in Britain have formed a partial cooperation network. University of Botswana and University of Johannesburg, which published many influential articles, also have cooperation with University of Oulu and the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). On the whole, these globally famous universities have much cooperation with scientific research institutions in other regions or countries, illustrating that the researches are widely distributed geographically and the communication between different institutions in the same continent is quite frequent.
Figure 5 Institutional cooperation network map of the research |
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3.5 Influenced Authors
In this section,
Table 3 lists 10 scholars who have published 5 or more papers in the research of environmental governance and management in tourism. Among them, Dodds and Mbaiwa published the most, reaching 7 respectively. Dodds, from Ryerson University, focus on tourists' understanding and attitude towards environmental problems in tourism areas
[45]. He has discussed environmental policies integration and the implementation of sustainable tourism policies
[46, 47], and analyzed the tourist satisfaction and environmental management tools of beach tourism
[48, 49]. As a scholar at University of Botswana, Mbaiwa has been paying close attention to the Okavango Delta in north-western Botswana, revealing the impact of tourism development and the significance of the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program to biodiversity conservation, livelihood improvement and sustainable rural development in the area
[30, 50, 51].
Table 3 Top 10 Influenced authors based on publications |
| Author | Amount | Proportion | Institution |
| Dodds R | 7 | 0.45% | Ryerson University, School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, Toronto, Canada |
| Mbaiwa J E | 7 | 0.45% | University of Botswana, Okavango Research Institute, Maun, Botswana |
| Becken S | 6 | 0.38% | Griffith University, Griffith Institute Tourism, Nathan, Australia |
| Haider W | 6 | 0.38% | Simon Fraser University, School of Resources & Environmental Management, Burnaby, Canada |
| Kasim A | 6 | 0.38% | Universiti Utara Malaysia, Department of Tourism & Hospitality, Sintok, Malaysia |
| Lozano J | 6 | 0.38% | Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Baleares, Spain |
| Tyrvainen L | 6 | 0.38% | Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Helsinki, Finland |
| Duffy R | 5 | 0.32% | University of Manchester, Manchester, Lancs, England |
| Rey-Maquieira J | 5 | 0.32% | Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Baleares, Spain |
| Buckley R | 5 | 0.32% | Griffith University, International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Nathan, Australia |
Moreover, Becken is also a scholar who has put forward wise ideas on the environment and energy problems in the accommodation and service of tourism industry in recent years. She has emphasized the necessity of resource saving and sustainable development of tourism industry, especially in the accommodation industry and regional environment, and provides feasible suggestions on energy and water saving
[44, 52, 53]. Haider has contributed to the research on the behaviors of tourism operators and forest management
[54, 55]. Kasim has proposed a water management framework for the companies of accommodation industry
[56], identified the barriers and drivers resulting in the implementation of environmentally friendly behaviors in the food service industry
[57], and proved the positive effect of environmental management system on organizational learning
[58]. From the same scientific institution (Universitat de les Illes Balears), Lozano and Rey-Maquieira has published five articles together, mainly studying on the research of environmental policy and tourism economy
[59, 60]. In addition, Tyrväinen has concentrated on the protection and management of forest landscape and the development of nature-based tourism in Finland
[52, 61, 63].
3.6 Co-Citation and Cluster Analysis: Theoretic Basis
Co-citation analysis refers to the analysis of structure and characteristics of the subject and literature related to research object through the status that two articles cited by other literature at the same time
[64]. With the help of Citespace, the study visualizes the results of co-citation analysis of 1558 documents (from 1991 to 2020) into a network map (
Figure 6), so as to directly show the relevant degree of each research. The radius of node circle indicates the frequency of co-citation, and the co-citation network of the documents in this field has 1167 nodes and 2909 links. In order to further identify the crucial papers and the research development, the Top 15 important literatures with more than 7 times of co-citation are listed in
Table 4 and cluster analysis of co-cited literature network is showed in
Figure 6.
Figure 6 Document co-citation network and clusters |
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Table 4 The top 15 most co-cited documents by co-citation frequency |
| Count | Cited Times | First Author | Published Year | Published Journals | Title of the Document |
| 18 | 272 | Gossling S | 2012 | Tourism Management | Tourism and water use: Supply, demand, and security. An international review |
| 17 | 2787 | Jambeck J R | 2015 | Science | Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean |
| 13 | 145 | Fraj E | 2014 | Tourism Management | Environmental strategies and organizational competitiveness in the hotel industry: The role of learning and innovation as determinants of environmental success |
| 12 | 154 | Bohdanowicz P | 2011 | Journal of Sustainable Tourism | International hotel chains and environmental protection: An analysis of Hilton's we care! Programme (Europe, 2006--2008) |
| 9 | 117 | Molina-Azorin J F | 2015 | Tourism Management | The effects of quality and environmental management on competitive advantage: A mixed methods study in the hotel industry |
| 9 | 164 | Tzschentke N A | 2008 | International Journal of Hospitality Management | Going green: Decisional factors in small hospitality operations |
| 8 | 73 | Kasim A | 2014 | Journal of Sustainable Tourism | The importance of water management in hotels: A framework for sustainability through innovation |
| 8 | 60 | Mateu-Sbert J | 2013 | Waste Management | The impact of tourism on municipal solid waste generation: The case of Menorca Island (Spain) |
| 8 | 52 | Park Jeongdoo | 2014 | Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research | The impact of top management's environmental attitudes on hotel companies' environmental management |
| 7 | 57 | Arbulu I | 2015 | Waste Management | Tourism and solid waste generation in Europe: A panel data assessment of the Environmental Kuznets Curve |
| 7 | 639 | Gall S C | 2015 | Marine Pollution Bulletin | The impact of debris on marine life |
| 7 | 151 | Tang Z | 2015 | Tourism Management | An integrated approach to evaluating the coupling coordination between tourism and the environment |
| 7 | 53 | El Dief M | 2012 | Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research | Determinants of environmental management in The Red Sea Hotels: Personal and organizational values and contextual variables |
| 7 | 101 | Tortella B D | 2011 | Journal of Environmental Management | Hotel water consumption at a seasonal mass tourist destination. The case of the island of Mallorca |
| 7 | 65 | Geerts W | 2014 | International Journal of Hospitality Management | Environmental certification schemes: Hotel managers' views and perceptions |
Figure 6 presents 10 clusters, among which "marine litter", "future opportunities", "environmental management practice" and "environmental management research" are the four labels with majority of nodes. The color of nodes and linking lines corresponds to the time axis at the top of the graph. On the basis of the indexing words of articles, the feature words are extracted as the name of clustering labels by log likelihood algorithm. The details of clusters are shown in Table 5. The node size represents the number of citations in the cluster, and top terms are selected according to the frequency of keywords and crucial research content of each cluster. In summary, there are five key directions and research fields in the studies:
Table 5 Summary of clusters and their top terms |
| Cluster ID | Label | Size | Mean (Year) | Top terms |
| 0 | Marine litter | 61 | 2016 | marine environment; reducing plastic waste; waste abatement campaign; sustainable blue economy; persistent marine litter |
| 1 | Future opportunities | 57 | 2008 | current status; constraints; facilitators; energy-related challenge; carbon reduction management indicator; exploring managerial approaches |
| 2 | Environmental management practice | 50 | 2015 | sustainable facilities management; developing countries | environmental management practices; sustainable business models; corporate social responsibility; proactive environmental management |
| 3 | Environmental management research | 50 | 2013 | eco-friendly policies; impact | environmental good practices; eco-innovation; sustainable label; environmental conservation behavior |
| 4 | Tourism development | 48 | 2008 | natural resources; sustainable utilization; community-based tourism venture; traditional livelihood activities; conservation-based rural development |
| 5 | Tourism stakeholders' attitude | 36 | 2012 | sustainable management policies; tourism companies' performance; energy consumption; government policies; implementing responsible tourism practice; hospitality industry |
| 6 | Tourist accommodation | 35 | 2013 | tourist accommodation facilities; hotel business; corporate social responsibility; municipal solid waste management systems; participative development; environmental cost |
| 8 | Water management | 27 | 2011 | tourism water capacity; comparing water use intensity; green hotel; marine environment; comprehensive framework | water management |
| 11 | Tourism accommodation | 16 | 2005 | environmental performance; firm performance; environmental practice; hospitality industry; ecotourism cognition |
| 19 | Blue flag | 10 | 2017 | local tourist industry; sustainable beach management | blue flag; beach tourist; public bathing water; regulatory measurement |
1) Marine and coastal management. Cluster#0 "marine litter" and cluster#19 "blue flag" mainly reflect the research of marine and coastal management which is closely related to coastal tourism. By reviewing the past literature, Hall
[65] offered insights into the development trend of marine tourism and sustainable policies for coastal tourism management. Jambeck, et al.
[66] published on
Science ranks second by the frequency of co-citation in the co-citation network. This paper proposes a framework to calculate and predict the amount of waste generated by coastline population around the world that may be discharged into the ocean. Gall and Thompson
[67] evaluated the impact of these marine litter on the marine environment and biodiversity based on a wide collection of research literature and reports. This sort of studies emphasizes the importance of waste management and related infrastructure construction, which laid a foundation for the follow-up study of coastal environmental management and tourism development. In addition, through the Environmental Impact Model (EIM), Carić and Mackelworth
[68] estimated the influence of cruise tourism on the regional environment from various aspects (such as waste water and pollution emission), and introduced the environmental management practices and measures for pollution control and biological protection. Regarding "blue flag", a beach certification scheme and management system, many scholars have discussed whether Blue Flag certification could play a positive role in beach management and sustainable tourism as an eco-label or environmental management tool in recent years
[49, 69, 70].
2) Environmental management practice, policies and governance. The articles in cluster#2 "environmental management practice" and cluster#3 "environmental management research" focus on the research topics in this field, discussing the environmental management practice, policies, governance, sustainable management and models from governments and companies in tourism and hotel industry. In terms of government participation in environmental and sustainable practices and policies, Hall
[25] systematically analyzed the changes of sustainable tourism policies at different stages in the past, as well as the lag of policy in following the changes of sustainable tourism. It holds that the formulation of policies should learn from previous failures, and the government should pay attention to the environmental standards and environmental costs related to sustainable tourism and tourism development. Buckley
[39] explored ecolabels in tourism sector in detail, indicating that tourism ecolabels may become an effective and valuable environmental management tool under the support of public policy, effective assessment procedures and clear access standards. Through analysis of the environmental governance network formed by different types of tourism organizations (such as tourism associations, hotels and universities) in Antalya, Erkuş-Öztürk and Eraydin
[29] revealed the reality that tourism agents pay less attention to environmental issues in network activities. The paper proposes to formulate corresponding policies and support systems to improve the enthusiasm of organizations in environmental network to participate in environmental protection. Regarding the studies on environmental management of tourism enterprises, Dief and Font
[71] analyzed the key variables that promote companies to adopt environmental management behaviors and practices in the context of developing countries, such as chain affiliation, hotel star rating, and size. By means of Principal Component Analysis of the hotel survey data, Buffa
[72] identified the environmental management practice of small and medium-sized hotel enterprises (SMHEs) through three dimensions (operational practices, communication practices and organizational practices), highlighting the key role of public participants in the sustainable business model transition of SMHEs.
3) The attitude of tourism stakeholders. Tourism stakeholders (such as local governments, enterprises, tourists and community residents) play an important role in the local environmental management, protection and natural resource development. The research focus of cluster#5 "tourism stakeholders' attitude" is to explore the attitude of hotel managers and employees towards environmental management, tourists' willingness to travel under different environmental impacts, and the perception or attitude of local residents to various policies in the tourism area. For example, according to the qualitative research on the interview data from managers and employees at all levels of an international hotel, the effective support of the senior management to the environmental management system could improve employees' job satisfaction and enhance employees' environmental awareness through environmental protection training
[26]. Personal environmental attitude of hotel top managers would affect their perceived advantages of environmental management, which could play a positive role in the organizational involvement of environmental management
[73]. Additionally, Bennett and Dearden's study
[74] on the environmental plan of the marine protected areas in Thailand illustrates that the public support for environmental management in the protected areas is crucial, and the environmental management programs and plans formulated by the state should improve the public participation and regional internal departments' coordination from the governance aspect. Similarly, tourists' environmental awareness and perceived effectiveness have a positive effect on their eco-friendly behaviors. The hotel industry can invest more resources to arouse the awareness of potential and existing customers on environmental issues and the effectiveness of the company's environmental protection measures in reducing environmental impact, so as to increase the intention of tourists to purchase environmental protection products from hotels
[75].
4) Water management. As an important resource for tourism and hotel industry to consume and utilize, the efficient use and management of water is a concern of scholars. The main research object of cluster#8 is "water management" in tourism industry. With the highest frequency of co-citation, Gössling, et al.
[76] analyzed the water consumption of tourism sector from macroscopic aspect and the water resource management problems that may be faced in the future. In addition, this paper provides a series of meaningful water-saving measures from the perspective of supply and demand, such as installation of water-saving facilities, avoiding the construction of landscape and activity sites with large amount of water use, strengthening education and training, enhancing the water saving consciousness of employees in tourism industry, and increasing the utilization of waste water and circulating water. Gössling
[21] also suggested adopting preventive water management in tourism sector according to the study of the impact of local water use on tourism development in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and develops a novel water resource management performance indicator system applicable to tourist accommodation industry
[77]. Based on the investigation of representative hotels' managers on island of Mallorca in Spain, Deyà Tortella & Tirado
[78] analyzed the influence of various variables on the water consumption of the hotel by multiple regression method. The results show that the current tourism strategy of high quality and low seasonality is beneficial to the profit of the enterprise, but it would increase the water consumption and be conducive to the sustainable development of the region. Furthermore, Kasim, et al.
[56] expound the situation of global water shortage and high consumption of water in tourism hotels and put forward the 4Rs (innovative reaching, innovative recycling, innovative reducing, and innovative reusing) framework of innovative water management that hotel industry could adopt. It is believed that the attraction of tourist destinations can be maintained under the strong supervision of the government and the efficient and innovative water resource management of hotels.
5) Tourism accommodation industry. Moreover, the articles regarding tourism accommodation industry as research object in cluster#6 "tourist accommodation" and cluster#11 "tourism accommodation" concern corporate social responsibility, environmental performance and cost, and the relationship between firm performance and environmental management. Bohdanowicz, et al.
[79] conducted the case study of the environmental protection and environmental performance improvement plan "We care" for Hilton Hotel. The results indicate that corporate social responsibility required enterprises to operate green and minimize the impact on the environment. The sustainable environmental protection measures taken by enterprises could ensure the long-term development of local tourism activities and increase the attraction of tourism destinations. Mihalic
[80] emphasized the important role of corporate social responsibility in promoting "responsustable tourism" in the comprehensive sustainable responsible model. Garay and Font
[81] investigated the managers from accommodation enterprises in Catalonia, Spain, finding that the practice of sustainable responsibility of small and medium-sized enterprises are implicated to altruism, lifestyle and social commitment. There would be the positive correlation between business performance and ecological conservation, environmental responsible practice and the level of environmental enthusiasm
[82]. To a certain extent, the implementation of environmental management practice in hotels could be conducive to reducing the use of energy and resources, reducing costs, establishing a good enterprise image, thus improving environmental performance, which was beneficial to the development of differentiation or cost strategy
[83]. Besides, Fraj, et al.
[84] discussed the relationship between the hotel industry's adoption of positive environmental strategies and organizational capacity and competitiveness. They discover that innovative hotels are more proactive in environmental management, and hotel enterprises taking positive environmental management measures may also hold more competitive advantages.
3.7 Keyword Analysis
Keywords are highly concise to the research theme and core content of the papers. Through the keyword analysis, the development process, characteristics and laws of the research could be illustrated. Based on the findings above, in order to continue exploring the hotspots evolution of the study, this article makes a keyword time-zone visualization of 1558 documents (from 1991 to 2020) through Citespace (Figure 7). Each crisscross pattern node represents a keyword. The size of the node indicates the frequency of keyword occurrence, and the number of links reflects the number of keyword co-occurrence.
Figure 7 Keywords Time-zone visualization in the research |
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In the light of the outcome of keyword co-occurrence analysis, the research in this field has aroused resonance and been widely discussed since the concept of sustainability and ecotourism was put forward in the 1980s. From 1992 to 1998, the research themes such as "sustainable tourism", "sustainability", "sustainable development" and "environmental management" appeared and continue to the present. Subsequently, "conservation", "biodiversity", "climate change", "perception" and "attitude" of tourists and residents of tourism communities became the focus of scholars' studies. With the improvement of the management level of tourism and accommodation industry and the development of related theories, the hotel industry had enhanced the awareness of environmental management, and the studies on environmental "performance", "strategy" and "corporate social responsibility" had become new hotspots from 2008 to 2015. During this period, many scholars also advanced new ideas on "protected areas", "ecosystem services" and "natural resource management".
This study further analyzes the bursts of keywords in the literature from 2001 to 2020 shown in Figure 8, which can detect the time phase of some keywords' appearance. "Ecotourism", "environmental protection" and "consumption" are the three burst keywords with highest strength. It could be recognized that the keyword "coral reef" is the research hotspot from 2001 to 2010, and its duration is also the longest, principally because coral reefs, as an important natural resource, is the key protection and development object of marine and coastal tourism. Subsequently there were increasing discussions on "ecotourism", "sustainable tourism", "sustainable development" and "water management". The number of articles on "environmental protection", "natural resource management", "stakeholders", "rural tourism" and other keywords has evidently grown since 2011. In recent years, "waste management", "pollution" and "competitive advantages" have become new research hotspots.
Figure 8 Top 25 Keywords with the strongest citation bursts |
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3.8 Important Issues, Implications and Suggestions
Through the specific analysis of the high-cited literature related to the research hotspots in this field, this study lists six issues particularly concerned by scholars in the practice of environmental management in tourism destinations and tourism industry, as shown in Table 6. At the same time, the table also summarizes the actions that the government, tourism operators, enterprise managers and tourists could take on different management problems.
Table 6 Important issues and management implications of environmental management in tourism |
| Issues | Implications and suggestions | Related Articles |
| Water (use) management of tourism and accommodation industry | ● Hotels implement effective management of bathroom, kitchen and catering water, such as installing water-saving and energy-saving facilities for faucets, toilets, showers, etc.
● Companies could educate and train employees.
● The government and public organizations should strengthen the publicity of environmental and quality certification in the hotel industry.
● The hotel industry should strengthen its commitment to implementing a more efficient and environmentally friendly management model, and formulate scientific water use indicators according to the water use situation in different areas of the hotel.
● The government could establish a consulting and technical network to provide water-saving facilities and tools for the hotel industry.
● Hotels can use smaller towels and implement the restricted change policy for swimming pool towels, and enhance the recovery and reuse of hotel water and reduce sewage discharge.
● The hotel industry could optimize the irrigation of lawns and gardens, and the use of water in swimming pools.
● Tourism destination decision makers formulate effective groundwater management policies through scientific tools such as THG and GIS. | (Gabarda-Mallorquź et al, 2017; Gössling et al, 2012; Gössling, 2015, 2019; Hof & Blázquez-Salom, 2015; Kasim et al, 2014; Mclennan et al, 2017; Rico et al, 2020; Silva & Mattos, 2020; Styles et al, 2015)[56, 76, 77, 85–91] |
| Environmental management of marine and coastal tourism | ● Destination management in coastal and marine areas requires close cooperation among stakeholders, including the support of local communities, residents and enterprises.
● Beach's healthy and green environment is an important factor to attract tourists. The government can consider levying special environmental tax on beach tourism operators according to different conditions.
● The government needs to effectively supervise the non-conforming hunting and diving in coastal tourism areas in order to protect the diversity of offshore marine organisms.
● Beach tour operators could plan beach cleaning activities and utilize social media and platform to motivate more community residents and tourists to participate in voluntary activities. | (Brunnschweiler, 2010; Giglio et al, 2015; Zimmerhackel et al, 2018; Olya & Akhshik, 2019; Schuhmann et al, 2019; Dimitrovski et al, 2021; Liu et al, 2021)[92–98] |
| Biodiversity conservation in tourism areas | ● The wildlife tourism managers and environmental interpreters of the reserve should publicize the significance of wildlife protection to tourists and give examples as protection behaviors that tourists can do.
● Ecotourism in wildlife conservations can not only bring economic benefits to the community, but also enhance the public awareness of environmental protection and encourage local residents to participate in biological protection.
● The government should reasonably plan the construction of houses, roads and tourism facilities, and implement zoning management in wildlife reserves.
● Forestry practitioners should avoid intensive felling of trees to protect forest habitats and species. | (Ballantyne et al, 2011; Ghoddousi et al, 2018; Hull et al, 2011; Nyaupane & Poudel, 2011; Tolvanen et al, 2020; Udaya Sekhar, 2003)[99–104] |
| Adaptation of tourism to climate change | ● The travel process by means of transportation accounts for the majority of the total emissions. Promoting slow travel and increasing tourists' length of stay might be feasible mitigation strategies.
● Governments should scientifically formulate necessary adaptation measures and emission plans, and explore and promote low-carbon alternative transportation modes.
● The state should strengthen the education of tourism and accommodation practitioners and residents of destination communities on climate change.
● Governments could impose a carbon tax on fossil fuel energy and high-energy aircraft, and strictly regulate the consumption of land and water use in tourism sector. | (McKercher et al, 2010; Scott & Becken, 2010; Scott et al, 2010; Scott, 2011; Dickinson et al, 2011; Kaján & Saarinen, 2013; Fang et al, 2018; Scott et al, 2019; Gössling & Higham, 2021)[105–112] |
| Waste management in tourism destinations and hotels | ● It is necessary for the government to strengthen the education of accommodation enterprises and exert pressure through legislation. At the same time, community residents need to be encouraged to participate in waste management and supervision.
● Accommodation enterprises should actively participate in the government's waste recycling and classification plan.
● Managers and assistants in destinations and protected areas can publicize waste management practices through online tourism platforms and offline activities, and install and/or improve waste treatment infrastructure in sensible places in the scenic spots. | (Radwan et al, 2012; Rodríguez-Rodríguez, 2012; Singjai et al, 2018; Filimonau & De Coteau, 2019; Dodds & Walsh, 2019; Agyeiwaah, 2020)[43, 113–117] |
| Protection of veg- etation and forest resources in nature-based tourism | ● The government should formulate mechanisms for forest protection, supervision and enforcement to avoid excessive utilization of forest resources.
● Practitioners should keep practicing the sustainable development policy of forest management in the access, facility construction and operation of forest tourism attractions.
● The practitioners of the reserve shall plan according to the type of tourism activities and the sensitivity of the region to the activities, and reduce the impact of tourism activities on land and vegetation by adding artificial facilities.
● Top management of forest park should pay attention to waste control and improve tourists' awareness of environmental protection through reward and punishment measures.
● The forest park can cooperate with other units to establish a tourist impact control center to master the environmental changes in the reserve. | (Lee et al, 2010; Törn et al, 2009; Wang et al, 2017; Wu & Chen, 2016) [118–121] |
For the suggestions and management implication, the key to the environmental improvement of tourism destinations lies in the effective supervision and law enforcement measures implemented by the government and other public power departments, including legislation, scientific planning and collection of relevant taxes. Furthermore, the choice of water-saving and energy-saving facilities by tourism operators and hotels and the implementation of environment-friendly management pattern are important behaviors to promote the environmental improvement of tourism areas. As for hotels, this practice can also enhance the goodwill of tourists and customers and strengthen competitive advantage. In addition, enhancing environmental education for local residents and tourists would help to improve their environmental awareness and reduce the number of incidents such as damage and pollution to the environment. The participation of community residents might increase important unofficial forces for the sustainable management of destinations and protected areas.
Overall, the content of environmental management in tourism is abundant and diversified, including the governance and management of ecological environment, government policy-making, environmental management and responsibility of tourism and hotel enterprises, attitude and environmental behavior of tourism stakeholders, etc. The trend of interdisciplinary and multi perspective research is becoming increasingly apparent.
4 Discussion and Conclusion
With the utilization of bibliometrics and Citespace, this paper analyzes the characteristics, clusters and research hotspot evolution of the related literature of environmental management in tourism studies in Web of Science database from 1981 to 2020. The results indicate that the annual number of published articles in this field has basically maintained a growth in the past 20 years. Similarly, the rapid growth of the number of citations every year also proves the developing trend of this field to a certain extent.
According to 1558 papers collected, tourism and environmental science have the features of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, so that the research fields of these articles does not only involve tourism and leisure research and environmental research, but ecology, economics, geography and other disciplines as well. Regarding the publishing sources of these papers, journals focusing on sustainable development and sustainable management (such as Sustainability, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and Journal of Cleaner Production) published the largest number of articles. From the viewpoint of the combination of impact factors and citation frequency of journals, Tourism Management is one of the most highly influential journals, and these journals provide an important platform for further research in this field.
The source and authors of the literature are also statistically analyzed in the study at the same time. The People's Republic of China, the United States and Spain are the three countries with the largest number of published articles, while Chinese Academy of Sciences, Griffith University, University of Botswana and University of Johannesburg are the institutions with the most publications. Although the research in this field has not yet formed an intensive communication network from the perspective of institutional cooperation network map, there has been a broad global cooperation trend on the basis of national and regional universities' collaboration. Dodds and Mbaiwa are the scholars who published the largest number of papers.
The method of bibliometrics and Citespace software could review the development process and direction of the research macroscopically. Cluster analysis and keyword co-occurrence analysis help to form opinions on the research development and hotspots in this field. Based on the results of cluster analysis, it could be found that the key research directions are protection and management of ocean and coasts, environmental management research and practice, water use management, attitude of tourism stakeholders and environmental problems of tourism accommodation industry. The main content and implications are showed as follows:
1. Protection and management of oceans and coasts. Based on many studies on beach tourism destinations, scholars mainly suggest that the government should implement strict supervision and management measures, limit illegal interference in marine protected areas, and levy environmental tax on beach managers. At the same time, the government should encourage community residents and other stakeholders to actively participate in the governance and management of the coastal environment, such as cooperating with beach operators in voluntary cleaning activities. The certification scheme of beach environment might play a positive role in the standardized management of beach.
2. Environmental management research and practice.This research direction mainly discusses the laws and policies that the government can implement in tourism destinations and protected areas, and promote the development of environmental protection with the help of environmental management tools such as sustainable planning and environmental certification. Additionally, relevant studies also emphasize the important role of enterprise environmental management practice in furtherance of enterprise itself and local tourism.
3. Water use management. After exploring the level of water resources use in the overall tourism industry macroscopically, more research focuses on how to reduce the consumption of water through the water management of relevant companies. The government's promotion of the establishment of water indicators, the advisory services of energy-saving tools, and the adoption of more water-saving facilities and recycling schemes by enterprises are important management implication of the studies.
4. Environmental problems of tourism and accommodation industry. Such articles concern on the difficulties of environmental management, environmental performance and business performance faced by the accommodation industry. On the one hand, the hotels need to solve their own environmental problems (such as excessive water use and waste pollution) through scientific and reasonable environmental management solutions, so as to reflect the requirements of corporate social responsibility for green management. On the other hand, the internal environmental management system and measures of the hotel could help to improve the environmental performance of the enterprise. While reducing costs and saving resources, it would also contribute to shape an environment-friendly corporate image and improve the business performance.
5. Attitude of tourism stakeholders. Most of the studies are based on the derivative theories of value-attitude-behavior to explore the close relationship between tourists' environmental perception, environmental awareness and environmentally responsible behavior. Similarly, this kind of studies also regard enterprise top management as the research object, revealing that senior managers' environmental attitude and support for enterprise environmental management would affect employees' satisfaction. In terms of the management suggestions, education and training for employees and enhancing the environmental awareness of local residents could be effective measures for environmental management of tourism areas.
Furthermore, keyword time-zone visualization and burst analysis also illustrate that ecotourism, sustainable tourism, environmental protection, waste management and competitive advantage are the main topics discussed by scholars in the past 20 years. By analyzing the content of sample papers, issues such as the treatment of environmental pollution, the formulation of environmental policies, the protection measures of resources at tourism destination, drivers of the implementation of environmental management in tourism and hotel industry, key factors of improving the environmental performance of hotels are becoming highly concerned in recent years.
In general, research on environmental management in tourism has been developing rapidly. With the increasing emphasis on green sustainable development, the breadth and depth of research in this field will be further improved, and the interdisciplinary and cross regional cooperation will be strengthened. Besides, future research needs to extract the common parts of the research results because of the diversity of research topics and research objects. At present, most of the research on the environmental management practice of stakeholders in tourism are from tourism enterprises and hotel industry's point of view, focusing on the environmental management mode of companies, corporate social responsibility and the attitude of top managers and employees. The rest would concentrate on other stakeholders, including the government's supervision, coordination and incentive measures, the support of local residents, non-governmental organizations and tourists' pro-environmental behavior. Therefore, how to systematically consider the capabilities of various stakeholders and establish an integrated environmental management framework suitable for some tourism destinations or scenic spots may be the goal of future studies.
In 2015, the document "Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" released by the United Nations suggested 17 sustainable development goals, which refer to the protection and sustainable management of marine, forest and land resources. Governments around the world have also introduced corresponding environmental protection measures and policies. For scholars engaging in tourism and environment research, expanding the basic research in this field would provide important theoretical support and policy basis for sustainable policy.
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Figure 1 Procedures for collection and analysis of environmental management and tourism literature
Table 1 Top10 Influenced Journals
