Sustainability and ecology focused tourism research: A bibliometric evaluation with VOSviewer

This study was designed with bibliometric analysis method to evaluate the academic literature in the fields of ecology, tourism and sustainability. In the research, articles obtained from Web of Science and Scopus databases were analysed and publication trends, citation networks and keyword analyses were performed. In the study, a descriptive and quantitative approach was adopted to understand the development of ecological tourism and sustainability concepts in the literature. In this study, a bibliometric analysis was carried out using VOSviewer software, which is widely used in bibliometric analysis of scientific publications. Through this software, the distribution of academic publications on tourism, ecology and sustainability by years, the most cited studies, researchers, institutions and keywords were analysed. In addition, the main research topics in the literature and the relationships between these topics were visualised. The results show that the issues of tourism, ecology and sustainability have been analysed with increasing interest especially in recent years and scientific studies in this field have become increasingly diversified. The analyses revealed that ecotourism stands out in terms of political ecology in tourism, ecology and sustainability issues. This study provides a roadmap for future research in the field of ecology, tourism and sustainability and provides valuable information for relevant stakeholders.