Adventure tourism activity emerges earlier in the west, and now it has stepped into a superior developement stage. It has drawn the attention of the academy and the relative literature have also been increasing gradually year by year. Beginning with the development of adventure tourism, and based on the data from domestic and overseas academic journals and reports, this paper reviews and analyzes the contents of its researches at home and abroad, and gives some advices to the development of adventure tourism research. First of all, the research content changes grandually from general definitions to adventure tourism risk and safety, product, market, impact and even the thematic adventure tourism. And then, the research regions extend grandually to the rising adventure tourism destinations all around the world, from traditional adventure tourism destinations of developed countries. Further more, in research methods, while qualitative analysis decreases, application of empirical studies, quantitative analysis and interdisciplinary methods increase.
Based on the present situation of adventure tourism research, the paper brings forward several suggestions for future researches:(1) It's necessary to strengthen the discussion on basic theories and definition to get agreement on the comprehension of adventure tourism; (2) Researchers should focus on the weakness of research field, such as adventure tourism destination, production and so on; (3) It's necessary to extend research scopes, deepen traditional research and at the same time absorb more useful theories and methods from other related disciplines; (4) It's important to emphasize on the long term research using panel data to improve long term and dynamic researches on adventure tourism.