The exploration of travel motivation research : A scientometric analysis based on CiteSpace

In the tourism industry, it is becoming increasingly significant to answer the question “why do we travel”. There are various methods and perspectives to answer this question, but few studies focus on the development of travel motivation research. As a result, by investigating 1675 publications from 1990 to 2019, we provide a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the status quo and emerging trends of tourist travel motivation research. The findings are as follows: (1) The active countries in this area are The USA, The UK, China and Australia. (2) “Tourist personal values” and “preferences” are the emerging trends in recent years. (4) Most of travel motivation studies belong to the disciplines of social science, hospitality, business & economics, environmental science & ecology, management, transportation, engineering and psychology. By analyzing the development of travel motivation area from historical, conceptual and geographical perspectives, the hot spots in certain periods and the current status of this area are analyzed in detail. In this paper, we contribute to providing the visualized knowledge domain of travel motivation research, which helps researchers who are interested in this area to learn the development of travel motivation research in the recent 3 decades more directly. Besides, understanding the research fronts in different periods also enables decision makers, especially managers in the tourism industry to know more about their consumers so that they can set effective marketing strategies accordingly.