An Overview of Ecoturism Research Analysis Based on Web of Science

Having been proposed for more than 3 decades, the concept of ecotourism is one of the issues that attract much attention from the academic circle. Also, the concept of ecotourism develops with such terms as natural tourism, sustainable tourism and green tourism. With the assistance of CiteSpace5.7.R_1, a total of 443 papers included in WOS database from 2006 to 2020 were taken as the raw data in this paper for study. Visualized map analysis was conducted from such perspectives as country/region distribution, institution distribution, journal distribution, keyword co-occurrence, surge theme and highly cited literature, etc, which is purposed to determine the developmental status of this field over the past 15 years, identify its research hotspots and frontiers, as well as provide reference for ecotourism research.According to the research results, the number of relevant literature has shown an upward trend over the past 15 years, with the focuses of research placed mainly on those countries with relatively developed tourism industry. A large majority of the studies focus attention on the preservation of natural environment. Thought the research on ecotourism and sustainable development shows an uneven trend in the distribution of countries / regions, the distribution of various regions in the world is relatively balanced with regard to high-yield institutions. In the recent 15 years, there have been various research hotspots emerging, including nature reserves, rural economic development and others. As for the trend of research, ecotourism has attached increasing significance to the correlation with the growth of local economy. Over the past 15 years, ecotourism research involves at least three major themes. In spite of this, ecotourism research remains subject to some limitations on system theory and methodology. In the concluding part of this paper, a recommendation is put forward that the government should take various measures to guide the further development of ecotourism.