Research Lines on Social Entrepreneurship and Tourism: A Text Mining Analysis

Abstract

The increasing popularity of social issues is reflected in the changing macro-economic situation in the country. As a result, emphasis has shifted towards sustainable development, and many social entrepreneurs are increasingly creating new jobs, promoting growth, and creating unique economic opportunities. Tourism has a key role in the development of developing countries, as it brings income and offers employment opportunities to local people. Social entrepreneurs are people who use their skills to undertake entrepreneurial activities for social or environmental benefit. This study presents the analysis of research articles collected from SCOPUS database using the keyword ‘Social Entrepreneurship and Tourism’. The aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the articles published in different journals listed in A and A* of the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) and indexed in SCOPUS. The text-mining approach using a Bayesian statistical topic model called latent Dirichlet allocation has been employed to extract relevant information from the original articles that serve as a basis for summarising the study findings. The analysis was performed using statistical software R, which was focused on a systemic review of literature published in high-quality journals. The results indicate that most of the articles focused on five clusters namely tourism, entrepreneurship, social, entrepreneur and capital. All these clusters have not shown any connection with quality of life and CSR activities. Whereas social entrepreneurship (SE) is any form of enterprise involving human well-being and economic wealth creation. The phenomenon is typically understood as the side of entrepreneurship that pursues social aims, with a particular focus on poverty alleviation, community development, environmental sustainability and quality of life. Findings reveal 10 relevant topics. SE is the conscious implementation of innovative social solutions that benefit disadvantaged people, ultimately contributing to a sustainable society. Tourism is commonly referred to as travel, which is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon. The article also provides theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for further research.