Green Technology and Environmental Sustainability in The Tourism Sector: A Bibliometric Analysis

. Given the extensive number of empirical studies pertaining to this subject, a bibliometric study was required to create an overview of the literature on green technology and environmental sustainability. The objective of the study is to identify the most cited research journals. Six research questions were developed to study the number of publications per year, the number of citations per article, the country-wise contribution, etc. Using a bibliometric analysis, this study analyses and summarises the related literature from 1997–2023. The paper provides an all-around intellectual structure for the literature. It was found out that the research paper by Sharifi et al. (2020), entitled “The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management”, published in the journal "The Science of the Total Environment," was most cited journal. China contributed the most as far as green technology and environmental sustainability are concerned. It was also found out that most of the papers were published in 2020.


Introduction
Green technology is a broad phrase that refers to a field of fresh, creative ways to make everyday adjustments that are more environmentally friendly. It is produced and used with consideration for the environment and natural resources. It is intended as a substitute for fossil fuels as a source of technology that causes less harm to the health of people, animals, and plants, as well as to the environment [1]. Green technology is meant to lessen the waste and pollutants that are produced during production and use. Also, it is referred to as clean technology and environmental technology [2].
Although it can be challenging to precisely identify which fields fall under the purview of green technology, it is safe to state that " Green technology is the development and application of products, equipment, and systems used to conserve the natural environment and resources, which minimizes and reduces the adverse effects of human activities." The requirements of society should be met by this technology in ways that won't harm or deplete natural resources in the long run [3]. Green technology can be summed up as technology that satisfies current requirements while not interfering with the ability of future generations to satiate their own needs.
Environmental sustainability indicates that natural resources should be maintained at a sustainable pace because they are often non-renewable [4]. It suggests preserving, or at the very least not destroying, environmental resources. Development may be livable, equitable, and tolerable if one of these three pillars is weak [5], but because of how these pillars interact, development as a whole is unsustainable [6].
The tourism industry must increasingly consider topics including the usage of green technologies and environmental sustainability. People are searching for more eco-friendly and sustainable forms of transportation as they become more conscious of how their actions affect the environment. By embracing renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, the tourism industry can support green technology and environmental sustainability in a variety of important ways. This can make tourism activities less carbonintensive while also offering a more dependable and sustainable source of electricity.
The tourism sector might contribute significantly to environmental sustainability by reducing trash and improving recycling. This can involve cutting back on the use of throwaway plastics and other materials, putting in place composting and recycling initiatives, and educating visitors about their environmental impact. In the same way by collaborating with regional companies and groups, the tourism industry may also benefit regional communities and advance sustainable tourism practices. This can involve buying goods and services made locally, aiding environmental initiatives, and promoting ethical tourism practices. In terms of economic growth and job generation, tourism is one of the key industries, while Green technology and Environmental sustainability in tourism represents a global challenge. In order to review the pertinent literature, the current study will employ a bibliometric technique.
The Dimensions database is used for the bibliometric analysis of the study.It is a scholarly database that includes not just books, chapters, and conference proceedings but also grants that have been given, patents, clinical trials, policy documents, and altmetric data. It extends beyond research publications and their citations. These entities are also connected to one another in a rich multipartite extension of a citation graph. This database aims to document and provide understanding of the greater context of a piece of research [7]. The quick adoption of Dimensions by a variety of authors in the bibliometrics field is encouraging. Dimensions and other data sources have already been the subject of publications evaluating and contrasting the data quality [8] [9]. At this point in the system's development, the publication index has received a lot of attention. Yet, it is evident that a more thorough examination of Dimensions linkages outside the core publications index would be beneficial to a larger audience This paper addresses the following six research questions: RQ1: What is the publication pattern and subject matter of the most-cited publications on green technology and environmental sustainability? RQ2: What is the citation pattern for the most cited research papers on green technology and environmental sustainability? RQ3: Which are the countries that contributed most between 1997-2023? RQ4: Which organisations has the most influential publications? RQ5: Which article has the highest number of citations and is the most popular and influential? RQ6: What are the publication characteristics of the journals in which the most-cited research papers on green technology and environmental sustainability were published?

Database used
The Dimension database was selected as the source for this study's search of papers pertinent to the study's subject. Some notable bibliographic databases that are frequently utilised for research evaluations include ISI Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar [10]. However, only the Dimension database was employed for this investigation because it has a considerably greater range of materials covered. VOS viewer is also used because it is helpful in creating networks of researchers, research institutions, countries, keywords, and concepts as well as scientific papers and journals. Co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation, bibliographic coupling, or co-citation linkages can be used to connect items in these networks.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The study comprised journal papers written in the English language that were published between the years 1997 and 2023 and that dealt with environmental science, sustainability, and green technology. Articles that did not meet the three inclusion criteria listed above were excluded.

Data extraction and cleaning
The advance search identified important documents based on the criteria. After these documents were located, a data cleaning process was run to look for missing or incorrectly recorded information. In this method, two specific processes were used: (1) validating the data in the columns to make sure no crucial information was overlooked, and (2) cross-checking the data in the columns to make sure the field content matched the field title. Any incorrect or missing entries were erased as soon as they were found. After the final data set was verified, the list was ranked from highest to lowest based on the number of citations. The bibliometric information of the most-cited articles was then retrieved after they had been chosen. For further analysis in this study, the list was downloaded together with the following data: a) author(s), b) author(s) ID, c) title, d) year, e) sources (journal title), f) volume, g) issue, h) times cited, I link, j) abstract and k) DOI.

Findings and Discussions
The findings of the above-described analyses are presented in this section. According to the ordering of the study questions, the findings are presented. Graphs, tables, and bibliometric network visualization are used to present the analyses. The results of each analysis are presented alongside a discussion of it. RQ1: What is the publication pattern and subject matter of the most-cited publications on green technology and environmental sustainability?   Figure 2 shows the total number of citations for articles published between 1997 and 2023. As seen from the graph, the total of the citations dramatically increased from 2018-2020. It reached a peak in 2020. However, there was a significant decline in the years 2021 to 2022. Table 1 outlines the top 25 most productive countries in contributing journal articles on green technology and environmental sustainability and figure 3&4 shows the distribution of geographical publications. Of the list, the China contributed the highest number of Research 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 2 2 4 1 5 8 11  Papers (994 ) Followed by the Pakistan with a total of 357 articles, and United Kingdom(209). Meanwhile, France and Japan were the two countries with the lowest publications. Figure 5 shows a Visualisation map of publication network by country.   Figure 6 shows a Visualisation map of different institution's network by country.  The journals with the highest number of the most-cited articles are listed in the Table 3. Only the journals with at least three articles published are listed in the table for the sake of conciseness. These journals are ordered first by total citations, then by publications per journal. The majority of the most-cited works on green technology and environmental sustainability were found in Q1-ranked journals, as can be seen from the data. There are some articles in journals with a Q2 ranking, though.

Limitations
The study's design has some shortcomings that are inherent. The absolute no of citations that each article has got was used as the search criteria to determine which papers were the most often cited. Notwithstanding the calibre and significance of the latter, this might suggest a preference for older publications over more recent ones. The analysis relies on Dimension data, which provides detailed information about social science research. Unfortunately, we cannot confirm that our search approach has turned up all relevant journal papers because "stray citations" may have left out some crucial data. All bibliometric databases are prone to having essential data omitted [11]. Unquestionably, the data from Dimension provided a complete set of the most pertinent research that this study has produced. It should be mentioned that the data presented in this study may alter over time depending on the thematic trends that researchers take into account. Future research suggests trying several databases (like Science Direct) to obtain the bibliometric data.

5.Conclusion
Green technology and environmental sustainability are, in general, crucial factors for the tourist industry since they can help lessen the negative effects of tourism on the environment, encourage sustainable growth, and aid local communities. There are some intriguing results from this bibliometric analysis of the most-cited educational works on Green technology and environmental sustainability. The analysis showed that authors Sharifi, Ayyoob; Khavarian-Garmsir, Amir Reza have contributed to the most publications in terms of cited educational research, while the Beijing Institute of technology, Jiangsu university, and Fuzhou university were discovered to be the top three institutions in terms of scholarly work on Green technology and environmental sustainability in tourism industry. The findings also indicated that there is growing interest in the topic among researchers, as evidenced by the increase in publications and citations. According to the analysis, there were the most publications on the subject during the years of 2019 and 2021. The investigation also revealed that China, UK, Malaysia India and many more countries were home to the majority of this field's active authors. Important information regarding the most well-known authors, journals, institutions, and nations has been discovered through this scientific mapping of the extensive literature on the subject of Green technology and environmental sustainability. As a result, these data offer future researchers interested in these topics, information on the major authors, crucial keywords, and the best places to focus their papers. By providing a summary of the current body of knowledge, these findings further enrich the knowledge base.