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2Landscape Planning of Graduate school of Horticulture, Landscape Architecture Course, Chiba University,
648 Matsudo, Matsudo, Chiba, Japan 271-8510
648 Matsudo, Matsudo, Chiba, Japan 271-8510
1* 2
Saraswati Sisriany , Katsunori Furuya
Received February 21, 2020/Accepted July 16, 2020
Numerous definitions and concepts regarding ecotourism lead to different implementations in ecotourism policies
and systems. Identifying trends between countries provide valuable information for the development of inadequate
ecotourism sites. This study aimed to understand the trends in ecotourism policies in Japan, Indonesia, and Australia
by examining the bibliographic records of existing ecotourism policy research. These records were retrieved from the
Scopus database and processed by using the scientometrics analysis. The results show the significant research trends
of ecotourism policy in each country based on the co-occurrence of keywords were "conservation" for Indonesia,
"biodiversity" for Japan, and "management" for Australia. Whereas, based on the research field, it revealed a
similar priority within ecotourism policy between Australia and Japan in Social Science, while Indonesia in
Environmental Science. The pattern of the keyword network analysis results in an anomaly in Indonesia compared to
Japan and Australia, which clarifies the overlapping problem in ecotourism policy in Indonesia. It also visualized
the shifting trends of research in some timeline intervals and notifies their relation to the emerging of ecotourism
policy. This research also included the usefulness of the research results for future study and the recommendation for
the ecotourism policy, especially for Indonesia.
Ecotourism Policy Research Trends in Indonesia, Japan, and Australia
Abstract
1Graduate School of Horticulture, Department of Environment Science and Landscape Architecture, Chiba University,
Keywords: co-occurrence, cluster analysis, scientometrics, research themes
Ecotourism has been a widely defined and used concept
by researchers and experts from various academic fields.
This concept emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in the literature
on sustainable de v e l o p m e n t an d environmental
development, which then caused much enthusiasm for
conflicting debates (Fennell, 2015). One of the earliest
definitions of ecotourism was as activities of traveling to a
nature area that is undisturbed and uncontaminated with a
clear objective such as study, pondering, and enjoying the
nature view and its wildlife, including the cultural attractions
in the area (Ceballos-Lascurain, 1996). Ecotourism has been
recently defined as "responsible travel to natural areas that
conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the
local people, and involves interpretation and education"
(TIES, 2016).
Introduction
Increasing demand for tourism in the current era of focus
on ecological issues has given rise to the need for more
ecotourism sites. Respond to this need; almost all countries
have increasingly promoted ecotourism. The approaches
pursued by each country regarding the promotion of
ecotourism have varied, and most countries have conducted
ecotourism research based on their own needs, influencing
Indonesia, as a country with abundant potential natural
resources, the government of Indonesia strongly supports
tourism in a variety of ways. The governmental institutions
actively promoted ecotourism, including the ministries of
the presence and procedures of the national ecotourism
policies.
Australia is an excellent example of ecotourism due to its
recognized leadership and rapidly developing ecotourism
industry. Australia is one of the pioneers in ecotourism. It has
formed an organization named Ecotourism Australia in 1991
that has promoted ecotourism and developed the National
Ecotourism Accreditation Program (NEAP) ecotourism
standard launched in 1996, which was later renamed
Ecotourism Australia with various types of certification.
Japan has a specific policy of ecotourism in Japan that
been implemented since 2007 called Ecotourism Promotion
Act. The Ecotourism Promotion Council is in charge of
organizing ecotourism in Japan, as specified by the national
Ecotourism Promotion Act. The council members include
local government officials, citizens, and academics, and the
Council has links to 17 local institutions that organize
ecotourism activities tailored to the local culture and natural
sites in their zone (Fukamachi, 2017).
Scientific Article
ISSN: 2087-0469
Jurnal Manajemen Hutan Tropika, 26(2), 178 -188, August 2020
EISSN: 2089-2063
DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
This study aimed to understand the trends of ecotourism
policies in Indonesia, and in Japan and Australia as the
comparison, to understand and overcome a country's
problem related to the research trends and its policies in a
broader context and point of view, and to identify future
research trends and recommendations.
Methods
forestry and environment, marine, tourism, and home affairs.
Nevertheless, there is still a lack of integration of proper
ecotourism management at the central and regional levels,
leading to the uncoordinated development of ecotourism by
each party (Meilani & Muntasib, 2013). Research in
regulation and policy aspects is essential for national
ecotourism development since the failure of most ecotourism
programs is due to the overlapping management and lack of
coordination of the sectors responsible for the programs
(Nasution et al., 2018). State of the art of the researches and
its trend related to regulation and policy in ecotourism
development is necessary to be known.
Research trends in ecotourism policy in Indonesia are
expected to represent the problems behind ecotourism
development policies in Indonesia. Comparing the research
trends of Indonesia and other countries that have good
ecotourism development policies are expected to explore the
policy gaps among them to improve the ecotourism
development in Indonesia.
A research trend can be represented by a network of
various items such as references, collaborating authors, and
co-occurring keywords. Scientometrics is possible to analyze
several types of networks from bibliographic sources and
used for investigation of the document networks of co-
occurring keywords and cluster analysis (Chen, 2018).
Ecotourism policy research trends in Indonesia, Japan,
and Australia were analyzed using the Scientometrics
approach. Scientometrics is the quantitative study of science
using computational and visual analytics to detect and
identify patterns and emerging trends of research themes
based on existing publications or bibliographic records
(Chen et al., 2014). This method has widely applied to
various fields such as psychology (Chen et al., 2019),
sustainability (Albort-Morant et al., 2017; de Toledo et al.,
2019), environmental research (Martinez et al., 2019), city
planning (Min, et al., 2019), management (Guo et al., 2017),
and agriculture (Hossard & Chopin, 2019).
Data collection The data were retrieved from Scopus
Elsevier scientific database on its website within the period
between 1990 and 2019. The documents were specifically for
'ecotourism policy' and selected by using the advanced search
option based on the following keywords: TITLE-ABS-KEY
(("ecotourism" OR "sustainable tourism" OR "ecotourism"
OR "ecotourism") AND ("policy" OR "regulation" OR
"strategy" OR "strategies")). Furthermore, a limitation was
added to extract the database based on the research affiliation
country using the following keywords: AND (LIMIT-TO
(AFFIL COUNTRY,"country-name")). All of the selected
data were exported into the .ris format by the Scopus export
feature for further analysis in the CiteSpace (5.5) software.
Scopus was selected as the database of this research since
it has an option to limit the search based on a particular
All collected data were refined and then analyzed by
generating a series of co-occurring keywords networks based
on the title, abstract, and keywords noun phrase. The co-
occurrence keywords are regarded as the co-word relation.
The more frequent every two keywords co-occur, the
stronger the co-word relation is (Chen & Morris, 2003). The
keyword network analysis visualized by the betweenness
centrality degree, which represents the probability of the
closest distance in the graph (Chen et al., 2005). The higher
the degree, the bigger the word's size in keyword networks,
so we can easily recognize the significant co-occurrence
keywords, which we interpreted as the 'research trends.
Cluster analysis applied to classify the co-occurrence
keywords and summarize the essence of the abstracts in
bibliographic records into cluster labels, which we
interpreted as the 'research themes.
country; this feature was necessary to distinguish data
between Indonesia, Japan, and Australia. The other
consideration is because it often used as Indonesia's
requirement for research publication and brings an additional
reputation for Indonesian academicians. As an international
journal index, Scopus is most suitable for this research
considering its impact factor and standard, although it is
limited only for English articles.
Data analysis The selected research database from each
country was first analyzed by the Scopus Journal Analyzer
that is available on Scopus websites. It shows the research
trend of the selected document based on the published year,
subject, and document type. The analysis and visualization of
the keyword network and cluster used CiteSpace (5.5)
software (Chen, 2006).
Results and Discussion
According to the bibliography extracted from Scopus,
there were in 99 ecotourism-related research studies
Indonesia 35, and 296 , studies in Japan and Australia,
respectively. T ecotourism he number of research in Japan
was than in Indonesiamuch lower . However, the ecotourism
research has been consistently in Japan stated earlier and
since . I , ecotourism policy research just 2002 n Indonesia
started 2008; however, it increas significantly in in the year ed
the past five years . Meanwhile, Australia has (2015–2019)
begun research related to ecotourism policy since the early
90s, with a significant increase in the research effort two
decades later ( 1 Ecotourism policy research has Figure ).
been conducted in many subject areas. The most often
investigated subject area in Japan and Australia Social was
Sciences, whereas, for Indonesia, it Environmental was
Science ( ) Publication related to ecotourism policy in Table 1 .
Indonesia dominated by conference papers (52,2%), was
while in Japan (67,6%) and Australia (83,1%) were
Further examination also conducted based on various
indicators as follows: a) the pivot nodes, for intellectual
turning points of the research (Chen, 2012), b) silhouettes
scores, for the quality of the clusters (Chen et al., 2012), c)
cluster labels size, for the importance of research themes, d)
time interval for research evolution overtimes, and d) the
overall patterns. Both co-occurring keywords and cluster
labels in this article were combined into one figure of each
country.
Scientific Article
ISSN: 2087-0469
179
Jurnal Manajemen Hutan Tropika, 26(2), 178 -188, August 2020
EISSN: 2089-2063
DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
dominated by research articles ( ).Figure 2
Network analysis The trends in ecotourism policy research
in Indonesia based on the degree of keyword betweenness
results are "conservation", "ecology", "biodiversity",
"ecotourism", and "local community". Other issues
investigated in ecotourism policy research include
"fo r e s t r y " , "susta i n a b l e developm e n t " , "tourism
de v elopm e nt", "lo c al g o vernme n t", " ecosy s tem",
"planning", and "economics", as shown in Figure 3.
Conservation research plays a vital role in the ecotourism
policy field since it has the highest betweenness degree and
also forms the pivotal points, and connects the timeline
nodes from the early to recent studies. Hence, it can be
concluded that conservation is the main principle of
ecotourism policy in Indonesia. Various subjects of the
ecotourism policy research in Indonesia have included
carrying capacity conservation area for tourists attraction
(Murdiyarso et al., 2015; Aryasa et al., 2017), tourism
assessment (Sri Budhi & Lestari, 2016; Mustika et al., 2017;
Scientific Article
ISSN: 2087-0469
180
Figure 1 Documents by year.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025
Australia Indonesia Japan
Table 1 Top ten subject area of ecotourism policy research
Subject area Japan Indonesia Australia
13
57 91
1
36 15
18
20 199
11
19 186
7
17 49
2
9 8
-
7 -
3
6 24
1
6 5
1
4 2
Environmental science
Earth and planetary sciences
EnergyPhysics and astronomy
Engineering
Computer science
Business, management and accounting
Social sciences
Economics, econometrics and finance
Agricultural and biological aciences
Figure 2 Document types of ecotourism policy publication in Japan, Indonesia and Australia based on Scopus Index.
Japan Indonesia
Australia
Documents by type
Editorial (2.9%)
Documents by type
Documents by type
Review (8.8%)
Conference Pape.. (14.7%)
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved. Scopus® is registered trademark of Elsevier B.V
Article (67.6%)
Book Chapter (1.1%)
Book Chapter (5.9%) Review (1.1%)
Article (45.7%) Conference Pape.. (52.2%)
Conference Pape.. (2.4%)
Editorial (0.3%)
Undefined (0.3%)
Short Survey (0.3%)
Book (3.0%)
Book Chapter (1.1%)
Review (7.1%)
Article (83.1%)
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved. Scopus® is registered trademark of Elsevier B.V
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved. Scopus® is registered trademark of Elsevier B.V
Jurnal Manajemen Hutan Tropika, 26(2), 178 -188, August 2020
EISSN: 2089-2063
DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
Scientific Article
ISSN: 2087-0469
Ariefianda et al., 2019), and management strategy (Wardani
et al., 2017; Idajati & Widiyahwati, 2018; Indah et al., 2018;
Sasana et al., 2019). Research studies related to ecotourism
policy in Indonesia have mostly focused on a particular area,
and have been case study-based rather than nationwide.
In Japan, the highest degree of betweenness centrality
values was found for the following keywords: 'biodiversity',
'sustainability', 'Hokkaido', 'participatory approach', and
'heritage tourism'. These were followed by 'conservation',
'china', 'community', 'forestry', 'far east', 'ecosystem service',
'cultural heritage', 'destination management', and 'ecosystem'
(Figure 4). The critical turning point of the research trend was
identified for three keywords, namely sustainability, heritage
tourism, and participatory approach. Research trends shifted
from the 2002–2006 time period through the turning points of
heritage tourism trends to a participatory approach in 2010
and sustainability in the last five years. The pattern for
ecotourism-policy-related research in Japan includes
research that focused on the tourism practice in Hokkaido.
Various studies in Japan related to ecotourism policies are as
follows: understanding of the potential value in tourism
destination management to formulate new tourism strategies
(Higuchi & Yamanaka, 2019), marketing policy for
ecotourism (João Romão et al., 2014), tourism preferences
and demands of ecotourism (Neuts et al., 2016).
In Australia, the trend of ecotourism policy research in
Australia, based on the betweenness degree results, is
'management regime', 'management strategy', 'tourism
management', 'sustainable tourism', and 'sustainability'.
'Ecotourism' and 'Australia' keywords were excluded as
trends since their apparent keywords are related to all
ecotourism policy research in Australia and are not
considered to indicate trends.
The research trend in Australia has been consistently
focused on management. The turning point of the research
trend in Australia shifted from focuses on sustainable tourism
to investigations of management strategy. Numerous
research studies of ecotourism policy related to management
strategy cited include environmental impacts management
(Turton, 2005), tourist and wildlife (Orams, 1996; Orams &
Hill, 1998; Miller et al., 2004; Schianetz et al., 2009), and
cultural impacts (Chin et al., 2000).
Cluster analysis The six clusters were obtained for the
ecotourism policy research trend in Indonesia. They are a)
Coast People, b) Community based tourism, c) Sumatran
Elephant, d) Branding Strategy, e) Whale Shark, and f) Data
Collection (Figure 3). Cluster #0 Coastal People appeared as
Figure 4 Co-occuring keywords and cluster labels of ecotourism policy research in Japan.
Figure 3 Co-occuring keywords and cluster labels of ecotourism policy research in Indonesia.
181
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EISSN: 2089-2063
DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
Scientific Article
ISSN: 2087-0469
Figure 5 Co-occuring keywords and cluster labels of ecotourism policy in Australia.
Table 3 Cluster information for ecotourism research trend in Japan
Cluster-
ID
Cluster label
Size
Silhouette
Mean
(Year)
Top 5 keywords
#0
Coast people
31
0.695
2017
ecology, ecosystem, planning, community
participation, eco-tourism
development
#1
Community
based tourism
27
0.825
2017
sustainable development, sustainable tourism, tourism
development, sustainable tourism development,
#2
sumatran
elephant
19
0.812
2017
coastal community, development strategy, laws and
legislation, economic activity, employment
opportunity
#3
Branding
strategy
19
0.892
2017
local community, coastal ecosystem, tourist
destination, east nusa tenggara, coral reef
#4
Whale shark
18
0.955
2011
ecotourism industry, bajo fishermen, cetacea,
customary belief, long-lived migratory specy,
#6
Data collection
15
0.904
2016
ecotourism, tourist attraction, tourism, data
acquisition, data analysis
#7
Mangrove area
8
0.968
2008
biodiversity, agricultural management, cropping
practive, alternative agriculture, computer simulation
Cluster-ID
Cluster label
Size
Silhouette
Mean
(Year) Top 5 keywords
#0
Fengshui forest
41
1 2014 biodiversity, conservation, china, community
forestry, far east,
#1
Resident
empowerment
24
0.935
2012 sustainability, heritage tourism, cultural heritage,
sustainability of cultural heritage, spatial
econometrics
#2
Advantageous
cluster
22
1 2015 Hokkaido, destination management, policy
development, tourist satisfaction, economic impact
#3
Tourism industry
20
0.979
2016 group size, Japan, dolphin tourism, cetacea,
Amakusa Island
#6
Participatory
conservation
12
0.956
2013
participatory approach, khojir national park, bottom
up management, conservation management, local
people
#11
Nature-based
tourism
0.976
2003
coastal zone, primate, industrial application,
environmental impact, environmental protection
Table 2 Cluster information for ecotourism research trend in Indonesia
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DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
6
Similar to Indonesia, six clusters were identified for the
ecotourism policy research trend in Japan. They are a)
Fe ngshu i Fores t , b) Resid ent E mpow e rmen t , c)
Advantageous Cluster, d) Tourism Industry, e) Participatory
Conservation, and f) Nature-based Tourism, as shown in
Figure 3. Most of the silhouette scores in this cluster analysis
were close to 1 (Clusters 1, 3, 6, and 11) or were equal to 1
(Clusters 0 and 2). Therefore, all of the clusters have good
properties of homogeneity and consistency.
The most significant cluster in this result is Cluster #0
Fengshui Forest, containing 41 nodes of keywords (Table 3).
The top five keywords of this cluster not only include China
and the Far East (China, Japan, and other countries in eastern
the most significant cluster, containing 31 nodes of co-
occurrence keywords, and despite its lowest silhouette score
(0.695), it still has good homogenous and consistency
( ). The highest silhouette score was obtained by Table 2
Cluster #7 Mangrove Area, which is affected by the size so
that it has higher homogeneity and consistency. Most
research studies in Cluster #0 Coastal People have been
focused on mangrove ecotourism and management
(Arkwright & Kaomaneng, 2018; Feti & Hadi Sudharto,
2018; Harahab et al., 2018; Idajati & Widiyahwati, 2018;
Indah et al., 2018; Prasetya et al., 2018; Prasetyo et al., 2018;
Roziqin, 2018).
Based on the mean year information, the topic trends of
ecotourism policy research in Indonesia shifted from
mangrove area (2008) to whale shark (2011), data collection
(2016), coast people, community based tourism, sumatran
elephant, and branding strategy (2017). Unlike the other
countries, Indonesia cluster distributions overlap with each
other in recent studies. Taking into account that the number
of ecotourism-related publications increased significantly in
2017, this overlap may be due to the emergence of various
interesting topics for researchers in ecotourism policy. These
overlapping clusters may indicate the wide range of research
subjects examined in ecotourism policy research in
Indonesia, which is positive, or the overlap may also reflect
the problem of overlapping management in Indonesia
(Meilani & Muntasib, 2013; Nasution et al., 2018).
Scientific Article
ISSN: 2087-0469
Another impressive cluster in this result is Cluster #1
Resident Empowerment, considering the variety in this
research timeline. As shown by the various colors ranging
from dark blue to yellow, the research on these topics has
been continuously conducted since the first research
recorded in the database until recent years (2003–2017).
Resident empowerment has been believed to be the main
principle of sustainable tourism development (Boley &
McGehee, 2014). Such tourism is mostly ecotourism,
whereas empowerment defined as transformation growth of
people from vulnerable conditions to a condition of having
their power to manage their life and environment (Sadan,
1997).
Asia) but also biodiversity, and conservation. As can be seen
from the definition, the Fengshui forest is generally the
cultural preservation area of the natural landscape in China,
which is also common in other parts of Asia, such as Korea
and Japan (Chen et al., 2018). Thus, Cluster #0 Fengshui
Forest label covers the ideas of biodiversity and conservation
in the Far East. This forest concept is particularly meaningful
for supporting the present efforts of the national government
to contribute to urban forestry, ecosystem conservation,
cultural heritage preservation, and ecotourism (Chen et al.,
2018).
Based on the mean year information, the topic of
ecotourism policy research in Japan shifted from Nature-
based tourism (2003), to Resident empowerment (2012),
Participatory conservation (2013), Fengshui forest (2014),
Advantageous cluster (2015), and Tourism industry (2016).
This trend shows the main topics of ecotourism research in
Japan but does not eliminate the possibility that the other
research topics were also investigated in another timeline.
Most studies have focused on cultural and heritage such
issues as the relationship between the cultural heritage and
tourism (Loulanskia & Loulanski, 2011), cultural-based
perception of resident empowerment (Maruyama et al.,
2016), integration of cultural and natural resource into
tourism supply (Romão et al., 2017), and cultural-tourism
development centered on the World Heritage sites
(Yamamura, 2003).
Table 4 Cluster information for ecotourism research trend in Australia
Cluster-
ID
Cluster Label
Size
Silhouette
Mean
(Year)
Top 5 keywords
#0
Indigenous
tourism
44
0.892
2007
tourism management, sustainable tourism,
sustainability, protected area, tourism
#1
Biodiversity
conservation
15
0.974
1995
management strategy, interpretation, simple
enjoyment, conceptual model, management
approach, environmental education
#2
Management
policies
14
1999
tourist attraction, marine park, tourist behaviour,
ecotourism component, cultural dimension
#3
Sub-antarctic
region
13
0.967
1994
management regime, cultural heritage, managing
nature
tourism, government authority, heritage
#4
Northern territory
11
0.986
1994
aborigine, comanagement, cultural diversity,
australian national park, ethonecology
#6
Protection
policies
10
0.977
1993
future prospect, country ecotourism destination,
industry segment, client expectation, Australian
tourism
#10
Wildlife tourism
7
0.976
2009
wildlife tourism, wildlife management, animalia,
cetacea, whale
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0.960
Keywords that characterize each county research trends
are 'biodiversity' for Japan, 'conservation' for Indonesia and
'management' for Australia. Compared to other countries,
ecotourism policy research trends in Indonesia are focused
more on ecological conservation. Because Australia is a
prosperous country, ecotourism research, there is more
focused on "management." This is correlated with the fact
that the Australian management system, based on
accreditation and certification, can be a useful reference.
Research themes based on the cluster analysis between
Japan, Indonesia, and Australia also show some similarities
related to the co-occurrence keywords found. Japan and
Australia have similar research themes of Biodiversity and
Conservation, and Cultural and Heritage, while Japan and
Indonesia have similar research themes of community-based
ecotourism and conservation.
Comparison of ecotourism policy research trends Based
on the co-occurrence keywords results, similar research
trends between Japan and Indonesia were observed for some
keywords such as "biodiversity" and "community" or
"participatory approach" (Figure 6). Another similar
research trend in Japan and Australia is sustainability. This
comparison only includes five keywords with the highest
betweenness centrality. Therefore, while more similar
keywords may have been found, they have been excluded
because they are not considered as the trend.
Cluster #1, Indigenous Tourism, is the largest obtained
cluster and has been a part of Australian ecotourism since the
1990s (Table 4), with 200 indigenous tourism businesses in
Australia. Indigenous ecotourism refers to the involvement
of indigenous people in nature-based ecotourism activities in
their living environment, including their indigenous way
interpretation of nature and culture, generally related to the
Aborigine tribes. (Fennell & Downling, 2003).
In contrast to Indonesia and Japan, seven clusters were
obtained for ecotourism policy research in Australia. They
are a) Indigenous Tourism, b) Biodiversity Conservation, c)
Management Policies, d) Sub-Antarctic Region, e) Northern
Territory, f) Protection Policies, and g) Wildlife Tourism, as
shown in . Figure 5
Australia's researchers, on the other hands, see that
dealing with ecotourism can be simultaneously done by
having the priority to the management, whereby all means,
includes human, environments and its wildlife. Australian
National Ecotourism Strategy (1994), has considered as the
most excellent examples of policy development with
stakeholder involvement in ecotourism, with the belief that
growth and management of ecotourism are fundamental to
However, it does not necessarily mean that Japan's
researcher did not pay attention to the environment.
Biodiversity, as the most significant ideas on ecotourism for
Japan scholars, believed to the essential for well-being,
including human survival (Wearing & Neil, 2009). Besides,
the most significant cluster is the Fengshui forest, as a
trad iti onal ecologica l k nowledge for bi odi versity
conservation in Japan, supported the ideas of both people and
the environment that are equally important in ecotourism for
Japan's researchers. Whereas, traditional ecological
knowledge, which often falls into cultural-ecological
studies, is an ethnological approach that sees the modes of
production of societies around the world as an adaptation to
their local environments (Berkes, 2012). As also mentioned
in Japan's ecotourism policy, Ecotourism Promotion Act
(2007), ecotourism should consider the conservation of
biodiversity as well as contributing to the sound
development of local communities and local economies, by
appropriately implantation of coordination among various
entities.
Research trends perspective and its relation to
ecotourism policy The first glance based on the numbers of
the study area shows that research on ecotourism conducted
in Japan and Australia are more anthropocentric approaches
as to how their most subject areas of the research are in Social
Sciences. Meanwhile, Indonesia scholar studies ecotourism
focuses on ecocentric approaches as the most subject areas
are in Environmental Sciences. On the other hand, define
judgment cannot only be based on the subject areas of the
publication. Background studies of the researchers should
also be the factors for these numbers. Therefore, from these
research findings on keywords and themes are supposedly
done to elaborate on the whole perspectives of these
countries regarding ecotourism policy.
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DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
Figure 6 Comparison of keywords trends between countries.
Hokkaido and heritage tourism
Ecology
and
conservation
Biodiversity
and
community/participatory
approach
Management regime,
management
strategy, tourism
management,
Sustainability
JAPAN
INDONESIA
AUSTRALIA
Ev o l u t i o n of ecot o u r i s m po l i c y ac c o r d i n g to
bibliographic records The findings of this research show
how trends shift from one to another time interval. Australia
researchers were the first to take off in ecotourism policy
history. Themes related to the policies were the earliest occur
before the national policy in 1994 came out, shows that their
most initial attention, in the mean year 1993, was to the
policies and then actually the output of the national strategies
itself. This policy indeed continues to develop and improve,
starting from the expansion of standards, to the deepening of
strategy. The evolution of ecotourism research in Australia
changes as it needs to deal with ecotourism issues, from
policy, conservation, and protection, and finally to
management issues. The turning point of the ecotourism
policy in Australia shows that management, which is also a
result of trends, is the most influential in their policies.
optimizing the benefits it offers (Fennell, 2015). This
strategy consisted of 12 ecotourism strategy objectives, as
follows: ecological sustainability integrated regional
planning, natural resource management, regulation, impact
monitoring marketing, industry standards/accreditation,
education involve indigenous people, viability, and equity
consideration (Grant, 1995). One of the objectives in these
strategies, indigenous people, became the main theme of
most researched in Australia, which is indigenous tourism.
Indonesia has one of the biggest tropical rainforest and
marine resources in the world. No wonder if their highest
priority is to protect their ecosystem. Moreover, as expected,
this research results supported the idea of their preference in
environments without leaving the importance of human life
behind. It also fits in with policies in Indonesia to apply the
ecotourism principles includes suitability, conservation,
economy, educations, satisfaction, community participation,
and traditional knowledge (Ministry of Home Affairs
Indonesia, 2009). Overall, all priorities of approach could be
the main factor of the different ecotourism policies in each
country. The similarity of these countries is that they still
keep the right balance between the environment and human
life.
Japan, which began its research in ecotourism policy a
little bit late in 2003, also visualized the pattern of keywords
networks in a natural movement flow. At the beginning of
they focus on natural resources. Then, after their ecotourism
policy came out in 2007, research soared and varied from the
community, conservation, traditional knowledge to profits
from the ecotourism industry.
Regardless of how Japan's and Australia's research is
social-oriented, it does not necessarily mean that Indonesia's
policy should shift into social oriented. But still, they should
consider enriching research about ecotourism policy from
the social science point of view. Ecotourism is not solely on
the environment because there is a robust interconnection
between humans and their environment. Also, note that
social science is a more dynamic topic compared to the
environment topic meaning the necessities on this aspect are
quite demanding.
The same pattern flow on the results of Australia and
Japan did not happen to Indonesia. Their attention to
ecotourism policies came later, causing overloaded issues
raised at the same time. It is noticeable in the pattern of trend
This study examines the ecotourism policy research
trends in Indonesia, Japan, and Australia based on the
bibliographic records by using the scientometric approach.
The number of articles and also the research themes are
increased rapidly in recent years for Indonesia, while more
steady for Japan and Australia. The result indicates that
Conclusion
The concept of the local community's participatory
approaches in ecotourism is similar between Indonesia and
Japan, but in terms of implementation, there is a
distinctiveness. Based on the similarity of the concept, it is
likely beneficial for Indonesia to learn about the
implementation of this participatory approach from Japan.
Finally, the authors consider this method can be
beneficial to understand the broader context of problems in a
country, especially if supported by comparing the results
with other acknowledgeable countries. Because without
comparing the result to the other countries, we cannot see the
abnormality of the analysis result. Difficulties for this
method include the interpretation of the keywords and
trends, and understanding using the software.
Potential future research and recommendation One of
the limitations of this research is the method that only relies
on keyword analysis, which, of course, another research can
develop using a more in-depth analysis method. Also, the
limitations of the Scopus database for publication from
Indonesia and Japan, indicate the potential for research using
the same method but with the local journal database of each
country.
Despite all those limitations, this study was able to find
issues in the development of ecotourism policies in various
countries. The approach and development process of
ecotourism policy issues used by Australia, Japan, and
Indonesia can contribute and be studied by researchers from
particular countries and other countries.
movements in Indonesia (Figure 3), which mostly emerged
in 2017 (Table 2). This last-minute attention could also be
one of the overlapping factors in policy and management in
Indonesia. Also, the last ecotourism policy in Indonesia from
the Ministry of Home Affairs was issued in 2009, and there is
no track record of previous research. However, as mentioned
earlier in the data collection section, it might have happened
because of the limited ability of Indonesian researchers to
publish the results in international journals with the Scopus
Index. This problem is serious because although Indonesian
journals currently have excellent research standards, it is
most likely that before 2009 their publication standards for
Indonesian journals were way from high.
One of the recommendations for policy in Indonesia is to
revise the regulation on ecotourism development from the
Ministry of Home Affairs Indonesia (2009). Likely, the basic
research for the policy is still insufficient. Thus the
implementation of their policy is less successful, as well as
needs to be more enhance and developed. Also, the
Indonesian government should clarify its goal for ecotourism
so that later it can create clear movement patterns in research
trends. This is then expected to improve overlapping
conditions not only in research trends but also in ecotourism
policies and management for real.
Scientific Article
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EISSN: 2089-2063
DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.26.2.178
Australia is the leading country in this ecotourism policy
research with the highest number of publications. The
networks analysis pattern and research trend's evolution
results suggested that the overlapping problem in Indonesia
is due to the interrelated problem between the lack of
research in ecotourism before their ecotourism policy made
in 2009, and no clear goals for the ecotourism policy in
Indonesia.
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