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The language of sustainable tourism as a proxy indicator of research quality

Brauer, Rene LU and Dymitrow, Mirek LU (2021) In Sustainability 13(1).
Abstract
Sustainable tourism (ST) has recently become the mainstream of the tourism industry and, accordingly, has influenced contemporary tourism research. However, ST is not just theories about indications and contraindications of global travel, but also a specific language that needs mastering to take sustainability work forward. In other words, what research receives recognition depends on the proficiency in how the articulation in research proposals and within assessment under the heading of “research impact”. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism research gains recognition within research evaluation, by investigating the national research appraisal in the United Kingdom (Research Excellence Framework). By using content analysis,... (More)
Sustainable tourism (ST) has recently become the mainstream of the tourism industry and, accordingly, has influenced contemporary tourism research. However, ST is not just theories about indications and contraindications of global travel, but also a specific language that needs mastering to take sustainability work forward. In other words, what research receives recognition depends on the proficiency in how the articulation in research proposals and within assessment under the heading of “research impact”. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism research gains recognition within research evaluation, by investigating the national research appraisal in the United Kingdom (Research Excellence Framework). By using content analysis, we disentangle the rhetorical choices and narrative constructions within researchers’ impact claims. Our findings suggest that researchers adopt a rhetorical style that implies causality and promotes good outcomes facilitating ST. However, the structure of the assessment format enforces an articulation of sustainable research impact without stating the methodological limitations of that such claim. Therefore, the rhetorical choices of ST researchers merely represent a proxy indicator of the claimed impact. We conclude that the lack of rigor in accounting for the impact of ST research may inadvertently restrict attaining ST. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
sustainable tourism, language, assessment culture, research impact, rigor, research quality, proxy indicators
in
Sustainability
volume
13
issue
1
article number
25
pages
17 pages
publisher
MDPI AG
external identifiers
  • scopus:85098635671
ISSN
2071-1050
DOI
10.3390/su13010025
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
954a9fe3-c89c-4d24-bacd-66903fb5d355
date added to LUP
2020-12-22 22:58:52
date last changed
2022-04-26 22:47:30
@article{954a9fe3-c89c-4d24-bacd-66903fb5d355,
  abstract     = {{Sustainable tourism (ST) has recently become the mainstream of the tourism industry and, accordingly, has influenced contemporary tourism research. However, ST is not just theories about indications and contraindications of global travel, but also a specific language that needs mastering to take sustainability work forward. In other words, what research receives recognition depends on the proficiency in how the articulation in research proposals and within assessment under the heading of “research impact”. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism research gains recognition within research evaluation, by investigating the national research appraisal in the United Kingdom (Research Excellence Framework). By using content analysis, we disentangle the rhetorical choices and narrative constructions within researchers’ impact claims. Our findings suggest that researchers adopt a rhetorical style that implies causality and promotes good outcomes facilitating ST. However, the structure of the assessment format enforces an articulation of sustainable research impact without stating the methodological limitations of that such claim. Therefore, the rhetorical choices of ST researchers merely represent a proxy indicator of the claimed impact. We conclude that the lack of rigor in accounting for the impact of ST research may inadvertently restrict attaining ST.}},
  author       = {{Brauer, Rene and Dymitrow, Mirek}},
  issn         = {{2071-1050}},
  keywords     = {{sustainable tourism; language; assessment culture; research impact; rigor; research quality; proxy indicators}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{1}},
  publisher    = {{MDPI AG}},
  series       = {{Sustainability}},
  title        = {{The language of sustainable tourism as a proxy indicator of research quality}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su13010025}},
  doi          = {{10.3390/su13010025}},
  volume       = {{13}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}