Rural tourism researches: A co-citation analysis

Abstract

The contributions of tourism to the economic, social, and cultural development of rural areas have been attracting the attention of researchers since 2005. Nonetheless, the scopes and intellectual structures of those studies are uncertain. Therefore, this study presents the most influential research groups, journals, and the most effective inter-research associations in the field of rural tourism within the last 20 years, employing the bibliometric mapping method. To this end, Web of Science Core Collection database was used to retrieve relevant data for the period of 2000-2020. Also, the data are limited to the English language. Articles, books, book chapters, proceedings papers were included in the analysis. Analysis of co-citation was carried out using VOSviewer.