Assessing research on the COVID-19 pandemic and tourism published in English-language journals: 7research progress and academic contributions

ABSTRACT

This article aims to address the adequacies of the preceding review studies, which have largely failed to systematically analyze the academic contributions (notably, theoretical and methodological contributions) made by the extant studies pertinent to COVID-19 and tourism. Specifically, we have collected up to 245 articles indexed in top 10 academic journals in the field of tourism studies, including Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and so forth. The keywords used for search involve "COVID-19" "COVID" "pandemic" "epidemic" "coronavirus" and "corona virus". The publication dates of the articles all fall somewhere between the start of the pandemic in January, 2020 and the 31st of August, 2021. Based upon the analysis framework proposed by authors, according to John Tribe's essay, and that formulated by Colquitt and Zapata-Phelan, this article evaluates the extent to which the sampled studies have made a contribution to the extant theories and methodology related to tourism.As the research outcomes manifest, first, the extant studies could be categorized according to their research themes. Specifically, most research shed light on tourist behaviours and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism development, particularly on the national and destinational levels. In contrast, very few has reflected upon the changes in tourism as a discipline, in general, and the relevant research approaches, in specific. Second, roughly half of the sample articles are quantitative studies, most of which are in favour of either questionnaires or statistics. In contrast, qualitative studies only take a lesser share. Third, with respect to academic contribution, it is clear that significant theoretical contribution is rarely made in the sampled studies. Most are found oriented to solving real-world problems. This imbalance would, perhaps, pose a threat to the growing tourism research in the long run. The reasons are manifold, but we focus upon triple key human and nonhuman factors, namely, academics, academic journals, and the rule and regulations by institutions (e.g., universities), which might have conspired to manipulate the process of (co-)producing tourism knowledge. Thus, to solve practical questions in the real time has become popular among academics, who might be increasingly reluctant to spend sufficient time and energy on theory building itself. Nevertheless, theory building, after all, is vitally significant, not least because it arguably paves a base stone for the future of tourism research. As such, we suggest that the current tourism knowledge production system needs to be reformed, encouraging more academics in future to focus on the theoretical significance of their own studies. This article has some limitations, as we only target the articles indexed in the top 10 journals in tourism. It means that our research findings might be less representative than expected. Moreover, it might be better to evaluate respectively the significance of the studies in different tourism subjects, whose fabrics might vary from one to another. In so doing, more nuanced insights might be mobilized in this aspect, providing most useful guidance to other scholars with utmost interest in the production of tourism knowledge.