From Shrines to Strategy: The monitoring a Temple Management Research Landscape a bibliometric analysis

Temples are complex institutions that work at the crossroads of religion, culture, governance, and economics. They control vast amounts of resources; plan and coordinate large events; and contribute significantly to local economies through the heritage tourism industry. The scholarly interest in temple management has been substantial in recent years, however, the literature has been published across a number of different disciplines (tourism studies; heritage conservation; religious studies; organizational management); to date, no complete mapping of the intellectual structure of this research field exists. This study examines the current research landscape; it intends to provide a detailed map of trends in temple management literature published over the years, the geographic distribution of research, influential journals and authors, thematic clusters of work and collaborative networks, and will also identify research gaps and areas for future research. A systematic bibliometric study was performed using 228 academically accepted, peer-reviewed journal articles sourced from the Scopus database covering the timeframe of 2010-2025. Articles were identified using two keywords: “temple” AND “management.” The dataset underwent a multi-stage filtering process based on year of publication, subject area, type of publication, language and country of affiliation. Data analysis included the use of VOSviewer for co-authorship/co-occurrence analysis as well as generating visualisations of networks within the data set. Publications output considerably increased between 2023 and 2022 in most countries studied (Thailand, India, United States, China). Overall, there were four major thematic clusters identified by the data: 1) Tourism Management; 2) Preservation of Cultural Heritage; 3) Heritage of Southeast Asia; 4) Social Science Research. A clear pattern was noted in the co-authorship networks where publication co-authors tended to be within their country and a low percentage were international authors. A number of “critical gaps” were found with regard to AI/smart technology use, climate change adaptation, gender issues, and financial governance. Temple Management is evolving rapidly and, as a multidisciplinary field of study, presents numerous opportunities for researchers to develop new ideas and create knowledge, particularly in terms of facilitating the use of technology, promoting sustainable environmental practices, and utilizing inclusive governance approaches.