Scholars began to make scientific research on tourism in the end of 19th century. Early tourism researchers focused on economic influences of tourism to destination societies. However, with the expanding of tourism activities and the growing of tourism populations, it was found that the influences of tourism had dramatically gone beyond economics. After World War II, the center of tourism research shifted from Europe to North America, and various disciplines joined tourism study. At present, most branches of tourism study have greatly developed, but few works are done about the correlative relationship between tourism study and its branches and the evolution trace of each branch.
The data of this article is the 1973-2003 Subject Index of Annals of Tourism Research, which is one of the most authoritative academic publications of tourism study. And through this academic publication, a birds-eye view of tourism study can be made and the evolution trace of this subject can be observed. The statistical data used in this paper is the summation of the emergence frequency of the subject words, which represents the quantity of the study of one branch. From commonality variance analysis, the branches contributing to the whole tourism study most are Tourism Psychology and Tourism Resource (Tourism Destination) Development and Management.
Considering the evolution traces of branches, the development of Tourism Resource (Tourism Destination) Development and Management shows a remarkably ascending trend; research on Tourism Management and Tourism Anthropology and Sociology presents a downward trend; the development of Tourism Economics, Tourism Theory and Technology, Leisure Study and Outdoor Recreation, and Tourism Planning and Design basically maintains a steady level; study on Tourism Politics is little and there is almost no research on Tourism Aesthetics.