Live streaming in hospitality and tourism: a hybrid systematic review and way forward

Purpose This study aims to provide a timely review of hospitality and tourism live streaming (HTLS) research, aiming to understand the intellectual foundation in the past and identify opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach This study collected 56 papers from journals in the Social Science Citation Index database or the Australian Business Deans Council journal quality list and adopted a hybrid systematic literature review combining bibliometric analysis and the theory-context-characteristics-method framework-based approach. Additionally, a cross-tabulation analysis was conducted to compare the research on two specific forms of HTLS – tourism e-commerce live streaming (TEcLS) and travel live streaming. Findings The study found that the current research lacks in-depth theoretical insights, focuses on China as the national context and viewers as the research subject, mainly uses online surveys and lacks first-order knowledge. Moreover, it identified five research themes, including the impact of HTLS on viewer behavior, purchase behavior in HTLS and introduction of HTLS, within which eight categories of research constructs, such as viewer-related, streamer-related and relationship-related, are applied. Research limitations/implications In terms of research, the study reveals various gaps in the existing literature and provides potential research directions to advance the field. As for practice, it offers valuable strategies for practitioners to optimize their marketing efforts using HTLS. Originality/value This study provides an up-to-date review of the HTLS field through a systematic and reproducible method. It offers critical discussions and suggestions for academic research and industry practices.