Assessing the Environmental Impact of Plastic Pollution in Tourism: A Bibliometric Analysis

Plastic pollution is considered a hazard to society, one of the most serious environmental problems in populous areas and regions where tourism is the main economy and where there is little infrastructure for domestic waste recycling. Thus, in this chapter, bibliometric analysis is considered a tool for analyzing the leading trends in research on the environmental aspects of plastic pollution-related tourism. This chapter provides a tangible overview of academic disciplines, responsible authors and their texts, and other research trends framed in the given dates. Existing academic production over the last two decades examined through Scopus data, allowing for the highlighting of the leading publication clusters on this topic and those whose works and authors have had the most impact. The data was analyzed using bibliometric tools Biblioshiny R and VOSviewer. The latter will help map global areas with the highest number of publications, originating publications, and most cited papers and recent trends in research concerning plastic waste (inherent and plasticizers, additives, and stabilizers, microplastics), circular economy/circularity concepts implemented and policy interventions. The results of the study show that intellectual research focuses on key areas such as the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems; the challenges of single-use plastics in the circular economy; and the importance of multi-stakeholder interaction in sustainable waste management. Finally, the chapter discusses methodological issues of the reviewed works, such as quasi- and quantitative approaches, case studies, and policy analyses, etc. Therefore, this chapter does intend to summarize the existing knowledge so it can be used in research and policymaking to this end, so it serves as a guide to improve the implementation of sustainable touristic practices with lower impacts on the ecological footprint of plastic pollution as an environmental issue.