A Bibliometric Study on Eye-Tracking Research in Tourism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine the position of eye-tracking studies in the tourism literature and to provide a panoramic perspective of social and intellectual structures of eye-tracking studies in tourism. Bibliometric methods have been used to analyze 64 studies published from 2013 – 2019. Descriptive, network, and cluster analyses were applied in the R statistics program. The annual growth rate on eye-tracking research in tourism was 38.31%. Most of the authors preferred to cite articles from tourism journals. Effective researchers preferred to use “eye-tracking” and “visual attention” as author keywords in their research. Most of the studies took place in a laboratory environment. The studies discussed many dimensions such as culture, language, website design, advertising strategies, satisfaction, and usability. However, the effect of marketing and behavior studies is remarkable. Institutions and countries with close geographical links tended to publish together, but countries such as the USA, the UK, China, and Australia come to the fore in the collaboration network. Scopus-indexed English publications, most of which are articles, and proceedings were analyzed. Future studies may use different academic databases and publication types. This study is one of the first bibliometric analyses of eye-tracking studies in tourism.