In what context do scholars differentiate recreation and tourism in park studies?

This paper investigated how recreation and tourism differ in academic publications by scholars. According to the analysis of abstracts from publications in Hospitality, Leisure, Sports, and Tourism (HLST) and Environmental Sciences (ES1), we found that scholars use the terms recreation and tourism differently in two major contexts: 1) when the two terms are both used in different but context-based related meanings and 2) when the two terms are used differently without context-based related meanings. In the latter context, there are semantic tendency differences between the two terms: tourism is situated more in tendentious contexts than recreation, regardless of whether it is negative or positive; also, negative semantic value judgement accorded to tourism is detected in a small percentage of the investigated publications (4/117). The context in which the two words are used with different but context-based related meanings, including park service and business, visitor activity and behavior, and park resource utilization. This paper investigated how recreation and tourism differ in academic publications related to park studies. The following theoretical and practical implications are provided to guide future research on how to use these two concepts appropriately. when indicating a neutral semantic tendency, tourism and recreation can be interchangeably used in most of the contexts of visitor use and activities impact, and sometimes in the context of park area businesses and industrial economics. when indicating a non-neutral semantic tendency and in a context that one term can be replaced by the other without affecting the meaning of the sentence, the two terms should be used simultaneously to avoid semantic value judgement. when investigating park service and business, visitor activity and behavior, and park resource utilization, tourism and recreation can be used as different and related concepts.