Research directions on corporate social responsibility in the hospitality sector: a bibliometric analysis

This study aims to examine previous research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the hospitality industry and suggest potential directions for future investigations. The data for this study were gathered by accessing records from the Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) databases, leading to a total of 1926 publications from 2006 to 2024. After removing duplicates, 1303 documents were selected as the final sample for analysis. The research approach employed bibliometric techniques, aided by VOSViewer software, including analyses of co-authorship, co-citation, and co-occurrence. Subsequently, a topic analysis was conducted to determine potential future research avenues. The findings indicate that there are four main research directions on CSR in the hospitality sector that have been explored. These are: CSR focused on customers, CSR focused on employees, CSR focused on the organization itself, and CSR focused on sustainable development. Among these, CSR focused on employees is the most recent research trend. Based on these results and identified research gaps, future research directions have been proposed. This study indicates that CSR in the hotel industry has been diverse and directed toward multiple stakeholders in recent years. Nevertheless, it is anticipated to expand even more vigorously in the near future.