A Bibliometric Analysis on Tourism Sustainable Competitiveness Research

Abstract

The present bibliometric review of research intends to document and synthesize research trends in the domain of sustainable competitiveness over the past decade. Through bibliographical analysis of 1259 Scopus-indexed documents, the literature published from 2010 to 2020 has been identified. Publication output analysis, citation analysis, journal analysis, geographical distribution analysis, and co-occurrence keywords network analysis are utilised in this study to identify the trending research and future direction of this specific field of study using VOSviewer software and Harzing’s Publish and Perish software. Findings revealed that the literature on both sustainability and competitiveness solely is in its growth stage. The most productive countries in this domain are the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. In the retrieved documents, the sustainable competitiveness indeed plays a pivotal part in the evolution of the tourism field and laid a solid foundation for future research. As this paper provides an understanding on the possible mutual reinforcing relationship between two concepts, a stronger linkage on sustainable competitiveness that may catalyse tourism development can offer reference for future research through in-depth analysis.

1. Introduction

Over the last decade, one of the major events in the policy area has been the emergence of concepts related to sustainability and inclusive growth. Such conceptual schemes aim to unite the fundamentals of sustainability and go beyond the usual boundaries of economic growth. Sustainable energy should also be widely encouraged to minimize depletion in future usage. Since 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been applied by the United Nations as a universal call to action. The world has seen progress at a good pace toward SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) with regard to the Sustainable Development Report [1]. Despite the tangible gains in many countries, progress on broader issues such as pollution, biodiversity, or climate change has been patchy. In ensuring low environmental impact, renewable energy sources like wind energy and hydropower should be used to minimise sustainability issues. Meanwhile, improving competitiveness remains a principal prerequisite for increasing global shared prosperity. Addressing the emerging challenges, multi-stakeholders’ collaboration including governments, businesses, and society is needed. For instance, productivity should be ensured to achieve more pragmatic progress and enable countries to transition to more sustainable development models. However, the interconnection between sustainability and competitiveness remains uncertain, even though the number of studies on sustainability has surged significantly.

The tourism sector has played a vital role in the global quest for prosperity, and it has grown dramatically in terms of economic significance [2]. The World Travel and Tourism Council [3] pointed out that the travel and tourism GDP contribution accounted for 10.4% (USD 9170 billion) of the global GDP in 2019, following by 5.5% of the global GDP (USD 4671 billion) in 2020. The total travel and tourism GDP loss in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic was nearly 18 times that during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2009. During the period from 2014–2019, the travel and tourism sectors supported 334 million jobs (10.6% of all jobs) and created one-fourth of all net new jobs globally. One of the prominent features of tourism is its capability to stimulate broad-based economic activity [4]. Noting the above-mentioned contribution from the tourism sector, the growing linkages that occur between the sustainable and competitiveness should be acknowledged. A stronger linkage may catalyse the multiplier effects on this labour-intensive industry in terms of employment opportunities and local poverty reduction. The adverse impact of the pandemic might be temporary, but managing tourism in a sustainable competitiveness manner is critical for long-term policy planning.

Multidimensional concepts, competitiveness, and sustainability are often measured separately. Competitive strategies are critically important to enhance nations’ development and economic viability, especially those countries that are highly dependent on the tourism industry as one of their key income sources. Competitiveness relies heavily on the destination capability in creating and integrating value-added products that sustain its resources and market position [5,6]. It should be accentuated that competitiveness should always consider tourist arrivals and destination income in conjunction with the market share occupied in the global market. Meanwhile, competitiveness is also interpreted as the ability within a tourism destination to provide tourists with a satisfactory travel experience in a profitable manner. From the perspective of [7], destination competitiveness refers to the ability to deliver a high calibre of goods and services by emphasizing the needs of tourists.

Sustainability targets the practice of meeting current needs without jeopardising future generations’ resources, thus promoting the well-being of people [8,9]. Economic, environmental, and social elements provide the three fundamental pillars of sustainability. The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) defined sustainable tourism development as one that considers the current and future economic, social, and environment impacts, addressing the demand of tourists, the industry, the environment, and the host communities. Ref. [10] acknowledged the mutual reinforcing relationships among competitiveness and sustainable development. However, there is scant evidence of the interrelationship between competitiveness and sustainable development. Sustainable competitiveness refers to the strength of generating and sustaining national wealth while increasing the living standard of people in a competing economy. The interactions among sustainable competitiveness should be emphasized in the measurement and evaluation of elements.

The present study performed an exploratory analysis of the research topic on sustainable competitiveness in the tourism sector. An application of bibliometric analysis is adapted to the current study to facilitate an understanding of the structure of sustainable competitiveness, evolution of the research field, and trends in academics. The research questions (RQs) are addressed as follows. RQ1: What are the main trends in research on sustainable tourism and tourism competitiveness? This is mainly to allow a deeper understanding of the interconnection on sustainable competitiveness, especially in the tourism sector. RQ2: What are the current citation patterns of publication on sustainable competitiveness research? RQ3: Which country is most productive on the sustainable competitiveness research in tourism? RQ4: What is the funding agencies distribution of publications? RQ5: Which themes of sustainable competitiveness research is popularised among scholars? RQ6: What is the possible future research direction?

This paper is structured as follows: The introductory section introduces the main concept relating to sustainability and competitiveness, especially on SDGs. The emerging concept of sustainable competitiveness in tourism has been discussed in the Section 1. The Section 2 focuses on the body of methods and research protocols to be applied to scientific papers. Empirical evidence from bibliometric analysis is further described in the Section 3. While the Section 1, Section 2 and Section 3 provide a condensed review of the research concept, Section 4 drawing conclusions and implications of the research, as well as addressing limitations and future research directions building upon the current findings.

2. Methodology

Bibliometrics as the mathematical and statistical application introduced by [11] have been utilised to assess the impact of journals, researchers, institutions, and countries [12]. A macroscopic view of an enormous body of academic literature can be obtained through bibliometrics [13,14]. Bibliometric approaches are effective in assessing journal performance [12,15], progress evaluation in certain fields of study within the stipulated period [16], and evaluation of the scientific influence. Compared to other qualitative and quantitative reviewing research methodologies, bibliometrics is a more objective and reliable analysis approach [17]. Furthermore, ref. [18] categorised the bibliometric method as a review of studies that comprises systematic review, meta-analyses, and qualitative approaches. It also applies relational techniques that encompass citation, bibliographic, co-word, and co-authorship analysis. Lastly, it utilizes evaluative techniques including productivity measures, impact metrics, and hybrid metrics. Bibliometric analysis has been employed in tourism studies to assess the scientific production in several subfields, including sustainable tourism [19,20], competitiveness and innovation [21], and even tourism impacts [22]. The current study aims to identify the interrelation between competitiveness and sustainable development, especially in the tourism context using bibliometrics.

In this study, bibliometric analysis was performed using the Scopus database from 2010 to 2020. Scopus is an extensive multidisciplinary database comprising citations and abstracts from articles, book chapters, conference publications, and patent records. Scopus also offers a dashboard for data visualisation and tools to track and analyse searched data. A comprehensive overview of the scientific research output worldwide can be accessed from the Scopus. Ref. [23] emphasized that bibliometric studies have become a prevalent approach to understanding research trends and the dissemination of information, particularly in substantive bodies of knowledge. Figure 1 demonstrates the data retrieval process and search strategy for the current study using the Scopus database.

As shown in Figure 1, the Scopus database is chosen as the primary research platform of this study. This is mainly due to its comprehensive citation and indexing databases that blend automatically to generate author profiles. The Scopus database has been selected in this study due to its prominence as the largest single abstract and indexing database [24] and is recognised as the largest searchable citation and abstract literature search list [25]. This allows users to access the citations, publications, authorships, academic institutions, funding agencies, and journal publishers efficiently. The characteristic of a user-friendly platform like Scopus allowed the set research questions to be answerable in this paper. First, the search criteria comprise of scope and coverage, keywords (“sustainable tourism” OR “tourism competitiveness” OR “sustainable competitiveness”), and the data extracted as of 26 September 2021. Second, the screening process covers the research refinement procedure. Following the search criteria as mentioned earlier, a total of 1942 documents captured in Scopus were filtered to 1317 documents with the coverage period from 2010 to 2020. Out of the 1317 documents, there are only 1259 documents included for bibliometric analysis after the filtration of language. The search string is limited to searched keywords, dates, and documents published in English only.

The research protocol, as illustrated in Figure 1, follows the combination of keywords to determine the target publications for the previous decade. The research done by [26] suggests that research refinement be performed on the period analysed, as the topics addressed in the earlier papers were most likely thoroughly explored in the subsequent ones. Thus, the current study highlighted only the past decade to analyse the gaps and trends in research for future direction and generally to develop the needs based on recent publications. Considering the sparse effort on bibliometric analysis of the intent to discover the causal relationship between sustainable development and competitiveness, the documents are restricted based on the title of the document. The search string was conducted to achieve this objective and produced a total of 1259 documents. Moreover, information extractions and data visualisation are done using Microsoft Excel (Office 365 A1 Plus), Harzing’s Publish and Perish software (version 8), and VOSviewer (version 1.6.17).

$$\mathrm{Average} \mathrm{citations} \mathrm{per} \mathrm{publication} \left(\mathrm{C}/\mathrm{P}\right)=\frac{\mathrm{Total} \mathrm{citations} \left(\mathrm{TC}\right) }{\mathrm{Total} \mathrm{number} \mathrm{of} \mathrm{publications} \left(\mathrm{TP}\right)}$$

(1)

$$\mathrm{Average} \mathrm{citations} \mathrm{per} \mathrm{cited} \mathrm{publication} \left(\mathrm{C}/\mathrm{CP}\right)=\frac{\mathrm{Total} \mathrm{citations} \left(\mathrm{TC}\right) }{\mathrm{Number} \mathrm{of} \mathrm{cited} \mathrm{publications} \left(\mathrm{NCP}\right)}$$

(2)

TC, TP, and NCP for each year can be obtained using Harzing’s Publish and Perish software. Furthermore, VOSviewer software was employed to perform major portions of the mapping analyses [27]. The number of overall strengths of the connections among past publications can be represented using VOSviewer [28]. The detailed analysis findings were then discussed further in the following section.

3. Results and Discussion

To answer the research questions on assessing the current trends, discover interconnections on sustainable competitiveness, and identify the future trends in tourism research, the following aspects of scholarly works have been analysed, and the findings are presented. The analysis of this paper comprised of document type, publications output, citation analysis, journal analysis, geographical distribution analysis, funding agency distribution analysis and keyword network analysis. As shown in

Table 1. Types of Retrieved Documents.

Document Type	Total Publications (TP)	Percentage (%)
Article	871	69.18%
Book Chapter	154	12.23%
Conference Paper	146	11.60%
Review	35	2.78%
Book	16	1.27%
Editorial	15	1.19%
Erratum	10	0.79%
Note	7	0.56%
Letter	4	0.32%
Retracted	1	0.08%

, 10 main document types are present in the publications. The type of the documents have been classified into article, book chapter, conference paper, review, book, editorial, erratum, note, letter, and retracted. The most frequently utilised document type is the journal article (871), accounting for 69.18% of the total publications. These are then followed by book chapter (154, 12.23%), conference paper (146, 11.60%), and review (35, 2.78%). The remaining of 4.21% includes book, editorial, erratum, note, letter, and retracted documents.

3.1. Analysis Findings

3.1.1. Output of the Publications

To answer RQ1 on the current trend of publications in sustainable competitiveness concept, Figure 2 demonstrates the number of sustainable competitiveness-related publications by year (bar graph) and the total citations (line graph) across the year of publication. It is noteworthy that a fluctuation phenomenon arose in the number of publications during the year 2010–2020. The highest number of total publications is observed in 2020, with a total of 197 (15.65%) publications. This implies that the scholars are aware and interested on the research concept. The most noticeable shrinkage in publications occurred during year 2013. Subsequently, a stable increase in the number of publications has been portrayed. On the other hand, a few notable increases in the number (n = 112, 148, 197) of publications arose, corresponding to 2012, 2018, and 2020. Interest in tourism competitiveness and sustainable tourism has become increasingly significant across the years. The growth of publications provides insight for researchers to observe the growth pattern and popularity of the research subject.

Citation trend in publication has been regarded as one of the important performance indicators to reflect the research impact [29]. As regards to

Table 2. Average Citations by Year.

Year	TP	%	NCP	TC	C/P	C/CP
2020	197	15.65%	131	752	3.82	5.74
2019	175	13.90%	139	1407	8.04	10.12
2018	148	11.76%	111	1279	8.64	11.52
2017	132	10.48%	117	1757	13.31	15.02
2016	102	8.10%	79	1351	13.25	17.10
2015	100	7.94%	79	1373	13.73	17.38
2014	82	6.51%	69	1520	18.54	22.03
2013	87	6.91%	73	2218	25.49	30.38
2012	112	8.90%	86	1957	17.47	22.76
2011	60	4.77%	47	1647	27.45	35.04
2010	64	5.08%	56	1907	29.80	34.05

Notes: TP = total number of publications; NCP = number of cited publications; TC = total citations; C/P = average citations per publication; C/CP = average citations per cited publication.

, the citation distributions are considerably consistent across the decade. This implies that the scientific papers in the related fields are continued to receive attention from the scholars. The average number of citations per publication can be another effective metric to assess the average impact for a journal or author. Based on the results of average citations, it is noticeable that the performance is better in year 2010, 2011 and 2013 (C/P = 29.80, 27.45, 25.49), with more than 20 average citations per publication. Despite the lower number from 2018 onwards, it is argued that the scientific impact and relevance are still there as the publications are still receiving upwards of thousands of citations per year. A more detailed citation analysis is discussed further in the following part of this paper.

3.1.2. Citation Analysis

Following by the second research question which aims to identify the citation patterns of the publications and determine the most influential articles and journals from the data extracted from Scopus database,

Table 3. Citation Metrics.

Metrics	Data
Papers	1259
Number of Citations	17,168
Years	11
Citations per Year	1560.73
Citations per Paper	13.64
Citations per Author	9072.64
Authors per Paper	2.63
h-index	61
g-index	94

depicts the extent to which a total of 1259 retrieved documents are cited in other pieces of academic works. A series of citation analyses have been presented to answer RQ2, including the citation metrics, general citation structure, top 10 highly cited articles and top 10 most active source titles. Regarding Table 3, citation metrics of 17,168 achieved in the past decade is now considered as the gold standard for measuring the outcome and impacts of the research. Through the citation analysis, the quality of the previous works can be assessed. The average citations per year for 1259 articles retrieved is recorded at 1560 which could be influential in the related field of study. Meanwhile, the h-index is also one of the more specific methods employed in the citation analysis to determine an individual’s impact.

Table 4. General Citation Structure (2010–2020).

Number of Citations	Number of Articles	% Articles
≥200	7	0.56%
100–199	17	1.35%
50–99	61	4.85%
25–49	97	7.70%
6–24	336	26.69%
1–5	469	37.25%
Zero citations	272	21.60%
Total Articles	1259	100.00%

Source: Prepared by authors based on Scopus data.

refers to the number of citations received, showing the most important works in this field [30,31,32]. The general citation structure shows an unequal distribution among the previous works done by scholars. The concentration of works has been observed at the lower end of the interval, with a small number of citations as well as without citations. More than 58% have low citations and no visibility, and the number of papers with more than 50 citations occupied around 7% of the other retrieved documents. This may be justifiable, as the articles are published within less than a decade, or because the research works have received insufficient academic interest. A more detailed list of the top 10 highly cited articles portrayed in Table 5 shows that the highly cited articles are mostly published in earlier years compared to those that were published in the year 2020. As the total publications demonstrate an increasing trend, it is conclusive that academic interest has risen over the years in this field of study.

As shown in Table 5, the document entitled “Sustainable tourism: Research and reality” has received the highest number of citations which accounted for 453 citations and 50.33 citations per year. This is followed by the document entitled “Influence analysis of community resident support for sustainable tourism development” (396 citations, 49.50 citations per year) and “Governance, the state and sustainable tourism: A political economy approach” (262 citations, 26.20 citations per year) ranked at the second and third places, respectively. An interesting issue regarding the top 10 highly cited articles arise as all the 10 articles are published before 2013 despite the increasing publication trends over the years. This signifies that the accumulation of citations from previous years are notable. Among the top 10 highly cited articles, there is only three articles found with less than 200 citations and less than 20 citations per year.

Table 5. Top 10 Highly Cited Articles.

Authors	Title	Citations	Citations per Year
Buckley (2012)	Sustainable Tourism: Research and Reality	453	50.33
Lee (2013)	Influence Analysis of Community Resident Support for Sustainable Tourism Development	396	49.50
Bramwell (2011)	Governance, The State and Sustainable Tourism: A Political Economy Approach	262	26.20
Michael Hall (2011)	Policy Learning and Policy Failure in Sustainable Tourism Governance: From First- and Second-order to Third-order Change?	254	25.40
Juvan and Dolnicar (2014)	The Attitude-Behaviour Gap in Sustainable Tourism	247	35.29
Miller et al. (2010)	Public Understanding of Sustainable Tourism	246	22.36
Waligo et al. (2013)	Implementing Sustainable Tourism: A Multi-Stakeholder Involvement Management Framework	244	30.50
Scott (2011)	Why Sustainable Tourism Must Address Climate Change?	196	19.30
Gibson et al. (2012)	Small-Scale Event Sport Tourism: A Case Study in Sustainable Tourism	171	19.00
Weaver (2011)	Can Sustainable Tourism Survive Climate Change?	170	17.00

Table 5. Top 10 Highly Cited Articles.

Authors	Title	Citations	Citations per Year
Buckley (2012)	Sustainable Tourism: Research and Reality	453	50.33
Lee (2013)	Influence Analysis of Community Resident Support for Sustainable Tourism Development	396	49.50
Bramwell (2011)	Governance, The State and Sustainable Tourism: A Political Economy Approach	262	26.20
Michael Hall (2011)	Policy Learning and Policy Failure in Sustainable Tourism Governance: From First- and Second-order to Third-order Change?	254	25.40
Juvan and Dolnicar (2014)	The Attitude-Behaviour Gap in Sustainable Tourism	247	35.29
Miller et al. (2010)	Public Understanding of Sustainable Tourism	246	22.36
Waligo et al. (2013)	Implementing Sustainable Tourism: A Multi-Stakeholder Involvement Management Framework	244	30.50
Scott (2011)	Why Sustainable Tourism Must Address Climate Change?	196	19.30
Gibson et al. (2012)	Small-Scale Event Sport Tourism: A Case Study in Sustainable Tourism	171	19.00
Weaver (2011)	Can Sustainable Tourism Survive Climate Change?	170	17.00

3.1.3. Journal Analysis

The retrieved documents are published in 160 different source titles. Only 1.88% of source titles published just one article, followed by 44.38% that published two articles. Only 11.25% of source titles have published more than 10 articles from 2010–2020. Findings revealed that the scientific production in the field of tourism sustainability and competitiveness is often published in non-specialised publications. This may be due to the transversal nature and multi-faceted phenomenon in both tourism sustainability and competitiveness. The publications are diverse, as these topics can be covered in various fields of knowledge.

Table 6. Most Active Source Title (2010–2020).

Source Title	Publisher	TP	%	Cite Score	SJR 2020	SNIP 2020
Journal of Sustainable Tourism	Taylor & Francis	130	10.33%	8.3	1.734	2.561
Sustainability Switzerland	Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)	102	8.10%	3.9	0.612	1.242
African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure	Africa Journals	20	1.59%	1.1	0.232	0.551
Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes	Emerald	19	1.51%	2.7	0.392	0.657
Tourism Management Perspectives	Elsevier	17	1.35%	6.8	1.454	2.27
Tourism Planning and Development	Taylor & Francis	16	1.27%	3.7	0.727	1.299
Current Issues in Tourism	Taylor & Francis	15	1.19%	8.6	1.725	2.756
Tourism Management	Elsevier	15	1.19%	16.5	3.328	4.163
Annals of Tourism Research	Elsevier	12	0.95%	7	2.159	2.645
European Journal of Tourism Research	Varna University of Management	12	0.95%	2.1	0.467	0.962

shows that 28.44% of the documents retrieved (358 publications) are concentrated in the Top 10 esteemed journals. The Journal of Sustainable Tourism stands out with 130 articles published on the subject (10.33%), well ahead of the journal Sustainability in the second position with 102 articles published. The interdisciplinary nature of the journal that deals with sustainability and competitiveness from different perspectives including economics, social contexts, culture, and the environment has inspired more published articles with high citations.

Apart from answering to RQ2, the findings from the most active source title (2010–2020) also revealed the renowned publishers as shown in Table 6. Taylor and Francis and Elsevier are considered as the famous publishers among the reported esteemed journals. The total publications disclosed with the Taylor and Francis publisher are accounted for a total of 161 (12.79%) publications whereas the total publications disclosed with Elsevier publisher are recorded at 44 (3.49%) publications. It is interesting to observe that the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) publisher occupied 8.10% of the total publications even though MDPI only appeared once among the top 10 most active source title.

3.1.4. Geographical Distribution Analysis

To answer RQ3 in identifying the most productive countries on the sustainable competitiveness research, geographical distribution analysis has been conducted. Researchers from 41 different countries contributed to publication in the retrieved documents, and the top 10 countries with highest contribution based on geographical distribution are presented in Figure 3. The United States ranked first, with a total of 123 (9.77%) publications. It is remarkable that the top 5 contributing countries shared the similar percentage in terms of publication contribution within the range from 8% to 10%. Among these, Europe is the continent with highest country productivity (292 publications or 23.20%), followed by Asia (253 publications or 20.10%), North America (161 publications or 12.79%), and Oceania (105 publications or 8.34%).

3.1.5. Funding Agency Distribution

To answer RQ4 on the distribution pattern of funding agency, the analysis finding obtained from the Scopus database is shown in

Table 7. Funding Agency Distribution of Publications.

Funding Agencies	Number of Articles	% Articles
National Natural Science Foundation of China	25	1.99%
European Commission	12	0.95%
European Regional Development Fund	7	0.56%
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad	7	0.56%
Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China	7	0.56%
Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan	6	0.48%
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities	5	0.40%
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia	5	0.40%
Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología	5	0.40%
Ministry of Finance	5	0.40%
Others	202	16.04%
No Funding Agency Named	973	77.28%
Total Articles	1259	100.00%

. Empirical findings reveals that the National Natural Science Foundation of China leads the distribution of funding agency with its 1.99% of publications (25 articles) among 1259 documents retrieved. This is followed by the European Commission (12 or 0.95% of articles), European Regional Development Fund (7 or 0.56% of articles), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (7 or 0.56% of articles) and Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (7 or 0.56% of articles). Apart from the top 10 funding agencies as listed in the table, the remaining of 202 (16.04%) articles were funded by other fundings agencies. Meantime, there are 973 (77.28%) articles did not contain the funding agency information as the authors do not provide it. China is leading in funding the research related to sustainable competitiveness as majority of the articles funded by funding agencies of China, followed by European Union member countries.

3.1.6. Themes in Sustainable Competitiveness Research

The fifth research question focuses on the popular themes in sustainable competitiveness research; the co-occurrence keyword network analysis is applied to answer RQ5. Co-occurrence of keywords indicates the existence of a relationship among two concepts in an article. The evaluation of keywords can represent the article content adequately. It is also vital for scholars to seek research trends through keywords network analysis, this part is also answerable to RQ6, which aims to identify the future research directions and measuring research topic development. The data obtained from Scopus database then undergoes a cleaning procedure. The duplicates occurring from spelling difference (i.e., protected area and protected areas; stakeholders and stakeholder) have been adjusted to further validate the analysis finding. A detailed analysis on keywords is demonstrated in

Table 8. Top 30 Keywords.

Keywords	TP	%	Cluster	Keywords	TP	%	Cluster
Sustainable Tourism	551	0.44	2	Governance	45	0.04	1
Ecotourism	361	0.29	1	Perception	43	0.03	1
Sustainable Development	337	0.27	2	Tourism Competitiveness	40	0.03	1
Tourism Development	236	0.19	1	Planning	39	0.03	2
Sustainability	222	0.18	1	Strategic Planning	37	0.03	1
Tourism	197	0.16	2	Decision Making	36	0.03	1
Competitiveness	126	0.10	1	Climate Change	33	0.03	1
Tourism Management	118	0.09	1	Rural Tourism	33	0.03	2
Tourism Destination	113	0.09	1	Tourist Behavior	33	0.03	1
Economic Growth	74	0.06	2	Innovation	31	0.02	1
Stakeholder	72	0.06	1	Local Participation	26	0.02	1
Environmental Protection	62	0.05	2	Cultural Heritage	25	0.02	1
Tourism Market	55	0.04	1	Conservation of natural resources	24	0.02	2
Tourism Economics	50	0.04	1	Sustainable Competitiveness	24	0.02	1
Protected Areas	46	0.04	2	Heritage Tourism	23	0.02	1

, with 30 most frequently used keywords indicating the most studied topics.

As shown in Table 8, the most active keyword is sustainable tourism which appears in 551 publications. Meantime, keywords such as ecotourism, sustainable development, tourism development, and sustainability appear in more than 200 publications, respectively. Findings demonstrate the popular theme of sustainability in tourism, while the research theme on tourism competitiveness comes later. The keywords such as competitiveness (126 publications), tourism destination (113 publications) and tourism competitiveness (40 publications) have been detected among the top 30 keywords. However, the theme of sustainable competitiveness seems to lack attention from the scholars, as compared to the theme of sustainability and theme of competitiveness, especially in the tourism context. The keyword of sustainable competitiveness appears in only 24 publications (0.02%).

A network visualisation map with clusters on the analysed field using VOSviewer software was done. This is mainly to allow the scholars to gain an insight on the current research development and future research direction through the construction and visualisation of bibliometric networks (see Figure 4). Figure 4 demonstrates the co-occurrence of 77 keyword network analyses, based on the threshold at a minimum of 10 occurrences. Larger nodes represent the most recurring keywords, while a stronger relationship can be observed when the distance between different nodes is shorter. Two clusters have been identified via the program, showing that nodes with the same colour belong to the same cluster. The colour, circle size, and thickness of the connecting lines indicate the strength of the keyword relationship. The indication of related keywords in the same colour shows that they are commonly listed together. For instance, innovation, quality of life, tourist behaviour, local participation, heritage tourism, governance and all keywords in red are closely related and usually co-occur together.

Through the network visualization map developed by VOSviewer on sustainable competitiveness research, the majority of the previous studies focused on “sustainable development”, especially in the tourism context. Generally, the concept of sustainable tourism covers the tourism experience and concern from the perspectives of economic (regional planning; willingness to pay), social (community-based tourism; local community) and environmental issues (conservation of natural resources; environmental planning; environmental management), as shown in Figure 4. The keywords are categorised into two main clusters, as indicated by two colours. The clusters also display the group of words that relate to each other. Ecotourism, sustainable tourism, local participation, and tourism planning belongs to the same cluster, namely “destination competitiveness”. A classical definition of destination competitiveness is understood based on its ability to create value-added infrastructure and prosperity for the local community while providing tourists with satisfying experiences. On the other hand, sustainable development, rural tourism, ecosystems, and protected areas have been classified into the “sustainable tourism” cluster. Ecotourism is a type of natural-based tourism that is managed ethically to be low impact, non-consumptive, and locally oriented.

Findings revealed that the acknowledgement of the sustainable tourism dimension, as well as the competitiveness race in the tourism economy. Mapping the sustainable competitiveness research creates an initiative in the new concept on how competitiveness interacts with sustainable development in the globalisation context. Consistent with the principal scheme of sustainable competitiveness developed by [10], the linkage and strength between sustainable development and competitiveness is still lacking. Both the “sustainable tourism” and “destination competitiveness” are recognised as independent events as one is not affected by another one. However, the findings propose that there is a mutually inclusive relationship between the “sustainable tourism” and “destination competitiveness”. Findings suggest that both scenarios have the probability to occur at the same time. To date, few studies have identified the mutual reinforcing relationship on sustainable competitiveness, and thus, further research can head toward filling this gap.

4. Conclusions and Future Research Direction

Established upon mapping the state of the art on sustainable competitiveness, the phases of identification, grouping, gap analysis, and research trends have been achieved through bibliometric analysis. The analyses presented in this paper are critical components to disclose the mutually reinforcing relationship among competitiveness and sustainable development, especially in the tourism sector. The scientific gaps presented in the literature can serve as a foundation for future research. Thus, the study presented is essential for assisting researchers to contribute significantly to the literature. The utilisation of bibliometric analysis can support the expansion of the frontiers of sustainable competitiveness, thus promoting the importance of investigating the interconnection among both individual terms as one of the avant-garde topics in the tourism context. Furthermore, the dichotomies between tourism and competitiveness and between tourism and sustainability raise the issue of whether competitiveness and sustainability should coexist. Findings revealed that the current tourism research faces a shortage from a comprehensive overview of the trinity comprising tourism, sustainability, and competitiveness. The multi-faceted tourism development acquired the joint analyses on both dimensions for future policy implementation. However, the integration data from two or more platforms could result in a more robust bibliometric analysis. It highlights the need for computational tools that help with data integration, the data-mining process, and data analysis demanding attention from researchers.

The current study outcomes suggest the arising importance and lack of literature discussing the dichotomy between destination competitiveness and sustainable tourism. These could be the guidelines for future study. Additionally, authors identify some limitations and potential threats to the validity of the current research findings. The first threat to external validity is that this paper focused on the Scopus database only, it might not be representative of the entirety of all publications. To address this threat, the study can be replicated by using other reputable database such as Web of Science (WoS) to increase the validity and accuracy, especially when it comes to funding agencies analysis. Meanwhile, future research also can consider the Google Scholar Citations for a simpler and wider coverage of the publications. Apart from that, the authors also identify internal validity to the research findings as relating to data retrieving process for bibliometric analysis, whereby different retrieval practices may lead to other possible analysis outcomes. Therefore, a longer period of study or other information retrieval practices could be applied to gain further insight on the sustainable competitiveness research.