MAPPING emerging trends in economic valuation and heritage tourism: a bibliometric analysis of cultural heritage site research (2004–2024)

Abstract This paper introduces a bibliometric review of the work in the field of intersection of economic valuation and heritage tourism that was published between 2004 and 2024. The analysis adopted descriptive statistics, the visualization into networks, and thematic analysis as based on publications obtained via Web of Science Core Collection to study how the field develops, is structured the way it does, and how it changes in its theme. The findings indicate the existence of a fast-growing yet disproportionate research community. Although production in publications is predominantly influenced by heritage-based emerging and transitional economies, theory and method orientated studies with stronger applicability are more often popularized in terms of traces. The co-citation analysis demonstrates that the field is mainly based on intellectual foundation of marketing, behavioral, and tourism research, but the keyword analysis reveals that the economic valuation is usually incorporated in the management-and-tourism-related research instead of being constructed as a specific theoretical focus of research. The finding of the keyword burst is also important to indicate a progressive change in the research interest toward the sustainability, governance, and long-term effects. Generally, the results identify a research gap in the literature and the necessity to better integrate the conceptual approach and to tighten the connection between economic evaluations studies and heritage governance.