Rethinking agrotourism: Integrating conceptual insight from existing scholarship

Agrotourism has emerged as a compelling strategy to bridge rural economic development with sustainable development. But how has the extant literature on agrotourism discussed the ways in which ‘agrotourism development’ shapes sustainable local economies? This article addresses this research question by undertaking a comprehensive review of the literature, including both a traditional literature review and a systematic review of 77 peer-reviewed articles published between 1994 and 2024. Both the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the literature return similar findings, namely: ‘agrotourism development’ shapes sustainable local economies through economic growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development. The timelines for these linkages established in the qualitative review also cohere with those in the quantitative review, although the quantitative analysis shows that the trends are not linear. Economic growth remains a recurrent theme, but increasingly sustainable development receives considerable attention, too. Both are deemed constitutive of the sustainable development process. Crucially, there are variations across space with some regions in the world emphasising some themes more than others and, even then, at different times. Overall, it seems that the agrotourism-development nexus is continent rather than categorical.