通过对56篇中国旅游地理学博士学位论文和76篇北美论文的比较研究发现:中国旅游地理研究的博士学位论文滞后于北美,但中国博士论文增长速度快于北美;北美论文选题视野宽泛而中国论文选题视角比较狭窄;北美旅游地理博士学位论文选题的学科本位特征比较明显,而中国旅游地理博士学位论文选题的实践驱动比较突出;由于中国和北美旅游业发展背景和所处发展阶段不同或研究者对旅游地理问题认识的差异使其博士学位论文选题倾向有明显不同,即使在同一时期也有不同的研究热点。在北美,旅游影响研究和旅游景观/形象/感知研究是两个长盛不衰的课题且涉及的论文数量最多;在中国,涉及最多的研究领域是区域旅游开发/发展和生态旅游。

Owing to their authoritative prestige, PhD dissertations provide us a perspective to realize a discipline's development. This paper, contrasting 56 PhD dissertations in Tourism geography in China (1989-2004) with 76 counterparts in North America (USA and Canada, 1951-2000), analyses their main research fields and their variation with time to disclose the academic tendency in Tourism Geography or in Tourism. From this perspective, it is evident that China's research lags behind that in North America. In contrast with broad research fields and scientific orientation in choosing topics in North American dissertations in Tourism Geography, China's dissertations are characterized with narrow research fields and practical orientation. While PhD dissertations in Tourism Geography of North America involve many disciplines such as Anthropology, Ecology, Sociology, Psychology, etc., China's PhD dissertations is mainly restricted within Geography and is of obviously regional character. And researchers in China often concentrate their research in several topics of general interest such as ecotourism in recent years, which shows immaturity in disciplinary development. Difference in development background and phases of tourism industry as well as researchers' understanding of tourism geography's issues between China and North America are responsible for evidently different tendency in choosing dissertation topics, even in the same period.
In North America, tourism impact and landscape/image/perception are two long-lasting topics in which 36 dissertations involve. Other important topics include tourism modeling, spatial-temporal rules, tourism market/industry development, tourist motivation/behavior, etc. The topics vary with time, with tourist resources/tourist attractions and tourism market/industry development before 1990, tourism planning/division and community tourism in early 1990s, and ecotourism/tourism sustainability and heritage tourism after 1995. On the contrary, in China, the topics mostly involved are regional tourism development and ecotourism/tourism sustainability followed by basic theories/issues in tourism development, spatial organization/distribution, and tourism region/theme parks, etc., whose variation with time is not obvious.