Page 177 - GHES-3-1

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability
Analyzing MHTW tourism for sustainable development

Table 1. (Continued)
Authors (year) Article description
Pessot et al. (2021) This systematic review examines the role of natural resources in health tourism; it also identifies key research
themes such as resource analysis and exploitation, tourist motivations, value proposition development, and cultural
considerations. The study highlights research gaps and proposes a multidisciplinary research agenda for nature-based
health tourism, offering valuable insights for both academics and industry stakeholders in sustainable health tourism
destination development.
Shahzalal & Elgammal (2023) This systematic review explores the critical role of natural resources in health tourism development and sustainability.
The study analyzes 52 papers and identifies key research areas including resource utilization, tourist motivations, value
proposition development, and cultural factors. The study findings provide a foundation for future multidisciplinary
research in nature-based health tourism and offer practical insights that can enable industry stakeholders to sustainably
leverage natural resources in health tourism destinations.
Stavroula & Vasiliki (2020) This study examines the decline of thermal tourism in Greece despite its rich resources, contrasting this fact with the
thriving industry in Europe; it aims to identify causes and propose solutions for improvement and sustainability.
Büyüközkan et al. (2021) This study conducts a SWOT analysis of Istanbul’s health tourism using an integrated hesitant fuzzy linguistic
AHP-MABAC methodology to identify and select the most effective strategy for implementation; it represents the first
application of this analytical approach in health tourism strategy selection.
The need for destination evaluation has increased in the medical tourism service sector because of factors such as technological innovations,
globalization, competition, and increasing customer demand. This study’s use of the SWOT analysis with a particular focus on the future prospects of
medical tourism in Kolkata facilitates the development of sustainable growth strategies to avoid long-term issues.
Zamani-Farahani (2016) This study examines the perceptions of residents apropos tourism development in Sare’in, a small tourist area in
northern Iran known for its hot springs. Locals support further tourism development but express mixed feelings about
its impact. The study indicates the need for expert assistance and enhanced cooperation with the National Tourism
Organization to ensure sustainable tourism development.
This study utilizes data envelopment analysis to demonstrate that educational tourism can enhance the efficiency of dairy farms by fostering a
broadened farmer identity, leading to improved demand creation and resource allocation.
Abbreviations: BATD: Community-based tourism development; LI-LMICs: Low-to-lower-middle-income countries; CVD: Cardiovascular disease.

to study the external characteristics of scientific literature but These search queries were designed to explore the
can also serve as an effective quantitative analysis tool and relationship between varied forms of tourism and
help researchers adopting a macro perspective of a research sustainable development in the Web of Science database.
domain present situational and developmental trends, “Medical tourism” is defined as individuals traveling to
thereby providing a scientific basis for decision-making about other countries or regions to receive medical services,
scientific research (Kabil et al., 2021; Luo et al., 2022; Zhao et al., whereas “health tourism” encompasses travel aimed at
2023). Citespace represents an important tool of bibliometric improving health, preventing disease, and relaxation.
analysis, which has facilitated significant achievements in “Therapy tourism” typically refers to travel for specific
the research of news communication. This method is also an treatments, rehabilitation, or convalescence, and “wellness
important means of constructing knowledge graphs (Trinh tourism” focuses on enhancing physical and mental well-
Thi Phuong et al., 2022; Yu et al., 2023). being through travel activities. Each query integrated
the theme of sustainable development, seeking literature
Therefore, the present study utilized Citespace to that addressed the specific type of tourism as well as
analyze 318 important articles from the Web of Science, sustainable development. This approach aided researchers
searching for papers related to MHTW tourism for in understanding strategies and practices in these tourism
sustainable development using the “top” retrieval mode. activities that support and promote sustainability.
The retrieval formula was as follows:
Citespace enabled the researchers to obtain 270 valid
(TS=(medical tourism)) AND TS=(sustainable documents after removing duplicates to ensure that all
development) manuscripts were academic papers in English and related
(TS=(health tourism)) AND TS=(sustainable to the research topic. Subsequently, an annual publication
development) analysis was conducted on the data along with author
(TS=(therapy tourism)) AND TS=(sustainable cooperation knowledge graph analysis, organization
development) cooperation knowledge graph analysis, keyword
(TS=(wellness tourism)) AND TS=(sustainable co-occurrence analysis, keyword prominence analysis, and
development) keyword clustering.

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 169 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.4149