Chinese Outbound Tourism Research: A Review

Chinese outbound tourism has been developing at a phenomenal pace, attracting the interest of both academics and industry practitioners. This article employs a hybrid review method that combines the narrative and systematic quantitative review methods to delineate the status of research on Chinese outbound tourism and to indicate areas that lack academic inquiry. It evaluates the scope, method, and themes of 161 articles published in 16 top tourism and hospitality journals between 2000 and 2014. The review calls for future research to shift from an advocacy stance to the sustainable and ethics platforms under research paradigms that are more fertile for cross-cultural research.