SMART TOURISM AND CHANGING TOURIST CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR: TOWARD AN INTEGRATED UNDERSTANDING

Abstract This study explores the link between smart tourism and tourist consumption behavior by systematically mapping and interpreting intelligent constructs. Adopting a bibliometric research design, the authors analyze 718 Scopus-indexed journal articles and review papers published between 2015 and 2025. A transparent, behavior-oriented screening process was applied to retain studies that explicitly examine how smart tourism technologies interact with destination contexts to shape tourists’ experiences, evaluations, and consumption-related decisions. The analysis combines descriptive performance analysis with keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution analysis, and thematic mapping using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix. Beyond structural mapping, the study incorporates an interpretative synthesis to examine how behavioral outcomes such as experience formation, satisfaction, loyalty, adoption, and engagement are conceptualized across the literature. The findings reveal a gradual shift from technology-focused perspectives toward more behaviorally grounded and decision-oriented approaches, while also highlighting persistent conceptual fragmentation in the ways smart tourism is linked to tourist consumption behaviour. By organising dispersed research streams into a coherent conceptual landscape, this study contributes to a clearer understanding of how smart tourism reshapes tourist behaviour within digitally mediated destination environments. The findings offer a structured foundation for future research and provide actionable insights for destination managers seeking to align smart tourism initiatives with meaningful behavioral and consumption outcomes across diverse destination contexts.