Themes and Trends in Australian and New Zealand Tourism Research: A Social Network Analysis of Citations in Two Leading Journals (1994–2007)

Abstract

Assessments and rankings of the contribution and influence of scholars, institutions and journals in tourism are becoming increasingly common. This article extends the existing literature by providing a finer grained understanding of key influences in tourism research. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the tourism literature by examining papers authored by Australian and New Zealand researchers in Annals of Tourism Research and Tourism Management between 1994 and 2007. A general picture of the field is drawn by examining keywords, the most-cited authors and works, as well as co-citation patterns. The analysis is extended by the use of social network analysis to explore the links between keywords and influential works in the field. The article also addresses the conference theme by identifying emerging themes and influences. Results indicate that tourism research in Australia and New Zealand has been strongly influenced by sociology and anthropology, geography and behavioural psychology. Emerging themes have focused on the health and safety of tourists, risk, wine tourism and segmentation.