Tourism Management 78 (2020) 104056 Available online 9 December 2019 0261-5177/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Three decades of tourism scholarship: Gender, collaboration and research methods Robin Nunkoo a, b, c, d, * , Michael Thelwall e , Jeynakshi Ladsawut a , Sandhiya Goolaup f a Department of Management, University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius b School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, South Africa c Griffth Institute for Tourism, Griffth University, Gold Coast, Australia d Copenhagen Business School, University of Copenhagen, Denmark e Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK f Department of Business Administration and Textile Management, University of Borås, Sweden A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Authorship Collaboration Research methods Gender Bibliometric ABSTRACT Despite ongoing problems with gender inequalities in tourism, little is known about gender differences in frst and solo authorships, collaboration, and choice of research approaches. This study analyzes these academic practices using 4973 articles (11,033 authors) in three major tourism journals from 1990 to 2017. The results show evidence of gender homophilic collaboration behaviors. Gender heterogeneous co-authorships are becoming pervasive and seem to be driven by female frst authors. Solo female researchers strongly associate with qualitative research. While male-only teams have the lowest likelihood of using qualitative research, the situation is more complex for gender heterogeneous teams. Practical suggestions derived from the fndings for the gender equality agenda in tourism are discussed to promote more gender-diverse collaborations and female- led research. 1. Introduction Substantial and pervasive gender differences in academia have led to a diversity and inclusion agenda for higher education that attempts to redress ongoing inequalities (Nygaard & Bahgat, 2018; Pritchard & Morgan, 2017). As part of this, tourism has started identifying and challenging its own gender inequalities. Implicit in previous biblio- metric studies on research productivity (e.g. Li & Xu, 2015; Pritchard & Morgan, 2017; Roberts, 1998), tourism research is not immune to gender differences (Basurto-Barcia & Ricaurte-Quijano, 2017; Pritchard & Morgan, 2017). Research practices in tourism are inherently mascu- linized, posing challenges for the gender equality agenda (Munar et al., 2015; Nunkoo, Hall, Rughoobur-Seetah, & Teeroovegadum, 2019; Pritchard & Morgan, 2017). This has led to gender differences in research output and academic leadership. There have been few discus- sions of the gendered nature of frst and solo authorships, collaboration, and research methods, however. These are key aspects of the research process and information about them is needed to understand the nature of gender differences within tourism research. Although the methodological choice for a study should be driven by epistemological considerations, the nature of the research problem, and the study objectives (Creswell, 2007) rather than researcher gender, academics may choose methods to master and then select research problems appropriate for that method. This element of choice opens the door for gender infuences. Perhaps because of such choices, female researchers and articles frst-authored by females are more likely to employ qualitative than quantitative approaches in many felds (Ashmos Plowman & Smith, 2011; Oakley, 1998, 2000; Williams, Kolek, Saun- ders, Remaly, & Wells, 2018). For tourism, in Annals of Tourism Research (ATR) from 1990 to 2015, the proportion of qualitative articles increased in line with the proportion of female researchers per year (Nunkoo, Hall, & Ladsawut, 2017), but it is not known whether this was due to gender differences in research method choice. A frequent, but largely untested, assertion in tourism is that there is an association be- tween gender and research methods, an argument that emanates from the historically gendered nature of the quantitative-qualitative divide (Oakley, 2000). This provides an impetus for studying authorship gender in combination with research methods. * Corresponding author. Department of Management, University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius. E-mail addresses: r.nunkoo@uom.ac.mu (R. Nunkoo), m.thelwall@wlv.ac.uk (M. Thelwall), j.ladsawut@gmail.com (J. Ladsawut), sandhiya.goolaup@hb.se (S. Goolaup). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Tourism Management journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2019.104056 Received 25 June 2019; Received in revised form 10 November 2019; Accepted 29 November 2019