Souvenirs: A Systematic Literature Review (1981–2020) and Research Agenda

Abstract

With the great economic significance of the souvenir business, academic interest in the souvenir field is increasing. The purposes of this study are to examine the holistic development of souvenirs research from 1981 to 2020, identify research themes and gaps, and suggest future research directions. With the tool of VOSViewer software, bibliometric analysis and systematic quantitative literature review were conducted. The research identifies five existing themes: (1) the souvenir object itself; (2) economic significance and socio-cultural impact; (3) souvenir business and ecology; (4) souvenir shopping behavior; and (5) souvenir shopping satisfaction and its consequences. This thematic map contributes to understanding the essence of souvenirs and their relationship with other tourism system elements; it reveals the possibility of exploring tourism phenomena and addressing the challenges through the souvenir field perspective. It has practical implications for the stakeholders to address issues and struggles for development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Comprehensive Study of Students’ Challenges and Perceptions of Emergency Remote Education During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Literature Review

“…PRISMA is used to conduct systematic literature reviews (Koehorst et al, 2021;Niskanen et al, 2021;Shen & Lai, 2022). The next step is synthesis analysis, which focuses on the SLR goals and organizes the variable of interests based on the overall features of the articles (Mengist et al, 2020).…”

“…PRISMA is a global initiative created to overcome issues such as the lack of transparent and well-documented review methods in published review articles (Rethlefsen et al, 2021). PRISMA is used to conduct systematic literature reviews (Koehorst et al, 2021; Niskanen et al, 2021; Shen & Lai, 2022). The next step is synthesis analysis, which focuses on the SLR goals and organizes the variable of interests based on the overall features of the articles (Mengist et al, 2020).…”

A Systematic Literature Review of Virtual Technology in Hospitality and Tourism (2013–2022)

“…Scopus was selected as the data source because it is the most widely used in bibliometric analysis and is considered one of the most comprehensive and powerful databases (Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016). It is also widely used in tourism research (e.g., Shen & Lai, 2022; E. C. L. Yang et al, 2017).…”

“…The design of the research process in this study referred to the methods of Mascarenhas et al (2018) and Shen and Lai (2022), which can draw large bibliometric maps that assist in providing a better understanding of the research progress and identify gaps in a particular area of research (Shen & Lai, 2022).…”

“…Previous literature reviews obviously cannot reflect the research content and trends of the rapidly growing number of articles in this field, so the reference value they can provide to researchers is limited. It is thus necessary to make a more comprehensive literature review based on the larger amount of recent journal articles to gain a more accurate picture of research progress in the field (Shen & Lai, 2022).…”