Tourism and carbon emissions: a bibliometric review of the last three decades: 1990–2021

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the diversified existing literature on tourism and carbon emissions using bibliometric analysis to churn down the multiple studies under one paper, which not only provides insights into the evolution and progress of the research area but also sets the future research agenda. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted the Scientometrics review methodology based on the bibliometric analysis. Bibliometric analysis is conducted through the following techniques, namely, citation analysis, thematic mapping, country collaboration, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence of keywords with the help of R-based bibliometrix and visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer open-source software. Findings The study identified the most prominent authors, studies, journals, affiliations and countries in the field of sustainable tourism, as well as the most co-cited authors and journals, based on a bibliometric analysis of 398 research papers retrieved from the Scopus database during the past three decades (1990–2021). Moreover, some of the relevant themes identified by the authors are energy use and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission of the tourism sector, economic impacts of tourism and CO 2 emissions and CO 2 emissions and carbon tax. Originality/value The outcome of the selected studies is a unique contribution to the field of sustainable tourism as it is one of the first known studies to review tourism and carbon emissions. It provides in-depth bibliometric analysis of articles and identification of the important research trends.