Understanding Dark Tourism Research through Bibliometric Mapping from 2017 to 2025

Abstract

This study aims to map the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and research trends in dark tourism scholarship over the past decade. It employs a systematic literature review combined with bibliometric network analysis of Scopus indexed journal articles published between 2017 and 2025, following PRISMA guidelines and using VOSviewer for data visualisation. The findings indicate a steady growth in dark tourism research, with dominant themes including thanatourism, memorial landscapes, visitor motivation, sustainability, and digital memorialisation, alongside increasing thematic diversification and uneven global research influence. The study is limited to English language publications indexed in Scopus, which may exclude relevant regional scholarship. Practically, the findings support the development of ethically informed destination management and interpretation strategies. Socially, dark tourism is shown to have potential to contribute to collective memory, ethical reflection, and social learning when responsibly managed. The originality of this study lies in its integrated bibliometric and thematic approach, which provides a comprehensive overview of the development of dark tourism research and offers a structured foundation for future theoretical and applied investigations.