Astrotourism consists of activities focused on observing night skies and celestial phenomena in natural spaces, which contributes to communities' involvement, empowerment and participation and to regional development. In addition to documenting the increased academic research on astrotourism, this literature review sought to construct a general theoretical framework for this field by analysing scholars' contributions and highlighting the ways in which this topic has been viewed over time. The analyses were based on the academic publications on astrotourism indexed in the Scopus