Rural Tourism and Sustainable Development: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Over the last few decades, mass tourism has proven to be beneficial to the economic growth of some countries worldwide. However, it is regrettable that mass tourism continues to harm the environment, thereby jeopardising the destiny of future generations. Among the damages, the pollution of seaside cities by plastic waste can be mentioned as an illustration. As a result, calls have been made to model tourism in order to mitigate the harm it causes. Thus, the concept of alternative tourism was born to bring novel solutions to the well-known tourism sector. Rural tourism is one of the sustainable alternatives that minimizes habitat transformation. It protects rural areas while providing jobs for the rural population. With this in mind, the current work used bibliometric analysis and Vosviewer software to examine the scientific support for rural tourism promotion for sustainable development. To this end, the number of publications, the journals involved, the scientific output by country, the authors, and author collaborations were analysed.