Amercian continent; environmental changes; publications; spatial and temporal trends; alternative tourism
Abstract
This work evaluates the production of scientific articles on alternative tourism developed in the American continent that were published from 1973 to 2017, through a scientometric analysis. The search was carried out in the ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus Database and Scielo databases. 4,137 articles were tabulated to analyze the spatial and temporal trend, and from these the following aspects were determined: the journals that published the most on the theme, the most cited segments of alternative tourism, the most covered themes, the amount of work carried out in protected areas, the character of environmental impacts and the most impacted environments. It is observed that it is necessary to develop more alternative tourism in order to respect what the essence of the segment requires, such as sustainable development, with involvement and appreciation of local communities and traditions, incorporating them into the economic sector and promoting environmental education.
