Page 182 - GHES-3-1

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability
Analyzing MHTW tourism for sustainable development

collective academic endeavors signify a global commitment the high-frequency keywords from 2014 to 2024 and their
to addressing environmental, ethical, and economic centrality in the Web of Science index of research related to
challenges in the field of MHTW tourism to steer the medical treatment, health, recuperative and health-related
tourism industry toward a sustainable and equitable future. tourism, and sustainable development. The keyword
“sustainable development” evinced the highest frequency
4.5. Keyword co-occurrence knowledge graph with 46 occurrences, indicating a high centrality (0.25) and
Keyword co-occurrence analysis is an important method specifying its vital role and wide application in the relevant
that can reveal relationships between themes and concepts literature.
utilized in a research field (Luo et al., 2022). Table 5 displays “Development” and “health” were also prominently
keywords with publication frequency ≥15 and notes their positioned, reflecting the growing interest in academia to
frequencies, centrality, and year of publication. Figure 5 construct more sustainable economic models and practices
shows the knowledge map of these keywords utilized in the in medical treatment, health, or recuperative and health-
relevant literature. Table 5 presents a detailed analysis of
related tourism. “Health” represented a high-frequency
keyword with a centrality of 0.26, evidencing that health
was a core concern of medical or health tourism and the
Table 5. Analysis of high‑frequency keywords of medical,
health, therapy, and wellness tourism and sustainable health industries. The keyword “tourism” evinced a lower
development (2014 – 2024) number of occurrences with a centrality value of 0.08 but
exhibited the highest number of occurrences in 2020.
Count Centrality Year Keywords Thus, medical tourism denotes a new form of tourism that
46 0.25 2018 Sustainable development is receiving increasing scholarly attention. “Management”
37 0.26 2024 Health (0.14) and “impact” (0.17) were also important keywords,
34 0.08 2022 Tourism signaling that researchers are studying how the medical
34 0.14 2015 Management tourism and health industries can be better managed and
29 0.14 2017 Sustainable tourism how their impact can be evaluated.
28 0.17 2023 Impact Each node in Figure 5 represents a keyword such as
23 0.16 2016 Impacts “sustainable development,” “health,” or “tourism.” The
23 0.16 2015 Medical tourism lines between the nodes represent the co-occurrence
relationship between the keywords: the thicker the line,
17 0.09 2019 Model
the more frequently the two keywords cooccur in the
15 0.08 2018 Satisfaction literature. Thus, thicker lines demonstrate a stronger

Figure 5. Keyword co-occurrence knowledge graph (2014 – 2024)

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 174 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.4149