Local Wisdom in Global Tourism A Bibliometric Analysis
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Abstract
Research on local wisdom in tourism has expanded rapidly, yet its global publication dynamics, intellectual structure, and thematic evolution remain insufficiently mapped. This study provides a bibliometric analysis of 673 English-language journal articles indexed in Scopus and published between 1980 and 2026. Using Bibliometrix R-Package for performance analysis and VOSviewer for keyword co-occurrence and thematic evolution mapping, the study examines publication and citation trends, leading countries, institutions, authors, and journals, as well as the conceptual structure of the field. The findings identify three phases of development: an initiation phase (1980–1999), an expansion phase (2000–2014), and a rapid growth phase (2015–2026). Research output is concentrated in a limited number of countries, particularly Indonesia, China, the United States, Australia, and Thailand, while the conceptual structure reveals five major thematic clusters linking tourism with local culture, Indigenous knowledge, sustainability, community-based tourism, and traditional ecological knowledge. Thematic evolution shows a shift from geographically grounded case studies and social change toward stronger emphasis on local wisdom, tourism villages, cultural heritage, ecosystem services, regenerative tourism, and circular economy. These trends suggest that local wisdom is increasingly positioned not merely as a cultural attribute, but as a knowledge-based foundation for sustainability-oriented, community-based, and socio-ecological tourism development. This study is limited to English-language journal articles indexed in Scopus, which may under represent relevant publications from other databases, languages, and regional publication outlets. Nonetheless, it offers a global overview of how local wisdom has been conceptualised and developed within tourism scholarship.
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