Birdwatching and its environmental impact: a bibliometric analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17736347Keywords:
birdwatching, biodiversity conservation, environmental impactAbstract
Research on birdwatching and its environmental impact has gained relevance due to its connection with sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and responsible tourism. This article analyzes the evolution of scientific output on birdwatching and its environmental effects in the Scopus database during the period 1994–2024. Publication trends, the most productive authors and countries, international collaboration networks, and emerging topics linked to environmental conservation were identified. The bibliometric study was based on the analysis of 262 indexed documents, using the Bibliometrix package in R Studio to evaluate annual scientific productivity, collaboration indicators, institutional co-authorship, and keyword frequency. The results show that the United States and China lead in scientific output and constitute the main hubs of international collaboration. The most frequent keywords were “environmental conservation,” “bird tourism,” and “climate change,” reflecting a growing interest in evaluating the ecological and social impacts of birdwatching. A sustained increase in publications was observed between 2010 and 2020, followed by a slight slowdown in recent years. Finally, the analysis demonstrates the continued expansion of this area as an interdisciplinary field between environmental science and sustainable tourism, underscoring the need to strengthen international cooperation and promote research with greater ecological and social impact, geared towards conservation and sustainable development.
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