Security and Securitization as Topics in Sustainability and Tourism Research

Abstract

There are many published bibliometric works in the literature on the broadly understood topics of tourism, sustainability, and security (STS). Most of these studies present an indexed approach, showing the impact of works, journals, spatial diversity, and the most frequently published or cited authors. The research and analysis undertaken in our work had a different goal: they were an attempt to answer questions about the degree of interest of researchers in the issue of STS, the dynamics of research devoted to the topics of STS, and internal differentiation in the broadly understood concept of security/danger in STS research. Data from the Web of Science journal database were used for the analysis. To determine the number of articles devoted to the topics of security, tourism, and sustainability, several combined keywords and simple statistical analyses were used. In the last 10, and especially 5 years (2019–2023), in each of the three topic groups, there has been an exponential increase in publications in journals indexed in the WoS database. In the sustainability category, risk and security received the most responses; in the tourism, COVID-19, and risk category; and in the tourism, sustainability, risk, and COVID-19 category. The use of keywords indicated thematic diversity in the field of security in each of the examined categories. The greatest interest among STS researchers was in studies related to the “COVID-19” threat. The results of the analysis allowed us to conclude there is an ongoing process of securitization in tourism research.