How Is Tourism Geography Situated in Taiwan? Geography Versus Tourism and Recreation

Quanyue Jiang, Weita Fang, Ben LePage, Guosheng Han*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Tourism geographers in Anglo-American geographical departments are transitioning into teaching and research tourism in applied schools and departments, such as business, resource and environment, and even cultural and creative industries. Because of pressure related to national research assessment and funding, tourism geographers are not encouraged to continue undertaking serious theoretical research related to their mother discipline, instead transitioning to conducting applied research and publishing in hybrid journals. Although such changes in tourism geographers’ research behavior are frequently discussed internationally, they have not been assessed and reported in academic contexts within Asia, particularly Taiwan. This study aimed to investigate the research behavior of tourism geographers regarding the differences between those who are staffed in geography departments and those who transition to applied departments such as tourism and recreation, resource and environment, and others. Their research behavior is examined in terms of publishing journals, paradigmatic approaches, research types, research methods, and geographical scales based on content analysis of articles published by tourism geographers in geography and tourism and recreation departments. The results revealed that there are significant differences in the research behavior of tourism geographers between different departments. Finally, this paper explains the differences in terms of Taiwan’s changing social and economic conditions, the academic traditions and politics of the geography and applied departments, the research habits and preferences of tourism geographers among departments, and other aspects. The findings can help international tourism geography academic circles understand the complexity and diversity of the tourism geography academic landscape of China.

Original languageEnglish
Article number7523
JournalSustainability (Switzerland)
Volume16
Issue number17
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024 Sept

Keywords

  • China
  • geography
  • methodology
  • scale
  • Taiwan
  • tourism
  • tourism research

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science (miscellaneous)
  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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