A global review of the trends and themes in polar tourism scholarship
Date
2025
Type
Book Chapter
Collections
Fields of Research
Abstract
In recent years, we have witnessed a proliferation in the scholarly output related to the study of polar tourism. Having made a first appearance as an area of research in its own right almost five decades ago, scholarship on polar tourism has undergone a significant transformation and is now more likely to be underpinned by empirical, multi-disciplinary, multi-authored and theoretically situated research than in the past. Updating previous reviews, this chapter systematically reviews 626 journal articles published on polar tourism (1974–2022) and identifies key research trends and themes. Following Stewart et al. (2005; 2017), a database of journal articles was updated through a keyword search of two online scholarly databases (Scopus and Google Scholar) and other regionally relevant search engines and compiled into a spreadsheet for analysis. The chapter extends the previous reviews by including articles published in languages other than English (22 languages). By doing so, this review presents, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of scholarly output on polar tourism, benefitting from the international research efforts that have been undertaken. While the chapter reports a dominance of Anglophone articles (almost 75% of all papers), there is an upswing scholarly work outside of the anglophone literature. This linguistic diversity stands us in good stead to advance our understanding of polar tourism in its many guises.
Permalink
Source DOI
Rights
© CAB International 2025