Sustainable Tourist Behaviour and the Intention–Behaviour Gap: A Bibliometric Review

The persistent gap between tourists’ stated sustainability intentions and their actual behaviour challenges theory and practice. This bibliometric review examines whether research on sustainable tourism and hospitality is oriented towards explaining behavioural intention, actual behaviour, or the transition between the two. A total of 1129 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus (2003–2026) were analysed through performance analysis and keyword co-occurrence mapping, complemented by a content analysis of outcome measures in a random sample of 300 studies. Output has grown rapidly since 2020 and is concentrated in a few journals, institutions and authors. Sustainable tourism and the Theory of Planned Behaviour are the most frequent keywords, and attitude, intention and perceived behavioural control cluster together, whereas terms representing actual and post-intentional behaviour are limited. The content analysis confirms this pattern at the level of study design: 63.3% of the sampled studies measured only behavioural intention, 24.7% relied on self-reported behaviour, one study observed behaviour directly, and only 7.0% tested whether intention predicted behaviour. Given the role of tourist behaviour in climate mitigation, the review calls for greater attention to behavioural enactment, situational constraints and objectively verified behaviour.