sustainability Review Linkages between Climate Change and Coastal Tourism: A Bibliometric Analysis Vyddiyaratnam Pathmanandakumar 1 , Sheeba Nettukandy Chenoli 1, * and Hong Ching Goh 2   Citation: Pathmanandakumar, V.; Chenoli, S.N.; Goh, H.C. Linkages between Climate Change and Coastal Tourism: A Bibliometric Analysis. Sustainability 2021, 13, 10830. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su131910830 Academic Editor: Pablo Peri Received: 4 August 2021 Accepted: 24 September 2021 Published: 29 September 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia; pathmanandakumarv@esn.ac.lk 2 Department of Urban & Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia; gohhc@um.edu.my * Correspondence: sheeba@um.edu.my; Tel.: +603-79675529 Abstract: Tourism and climate are inextricably linked to several interactions. In recent years, there has been a greater focus on the linkages between climate change and coastal tourism. This study aims to provide an overview of the literature on climate change and coastal tourism, identify core areas of interest and important sources and authors, and examine the thematic evolution of the field. A bibliometric analysis of 92 documents related to climate change and coastal tourism published in the Web of Science Core Collection database was carried out. The analysis provides information on the most cited papers, most leading authors, the most productive countries, and the most leading institutions in this field. The study utilized the Visualization of Similarities Viewer program (VOS) to map author keyword co-occurrences, co-citations, and bibliographic coupling. The study showed that, with some fluctuations since 2008, the number of publications in this field had increased significantly. The most influential authors and most productive institutions are from the United States of America, England, Canada, and other European countries. The findings of this study will assist researchers conducting climate change and coastal tourism-related studies to understand which papers, academics, organizations, countries, and journals have a dominant influence on climate change and coastal tourism research. Keywords: bibliometric analysis; climate change; co-citation; coastal tourism; visualization; VOS viewer 1. Introduction Scientific studies on climate change and tourism have expanded for more than 25 years since the first scientific paper was published in 1986 [1]. However, awareness of climate change effects on tourism has been sluggish over the next decade. Also, tourism was not mentioned in the IPCC First Assessment Report (1990) of the United Nations. Tourism received better coverage in the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC (1995) [2]. How- ever, the question of how climate change will affect tourism in the future was not well addressed [3]. Scientific studies relevant to climate change and tourism have risen sub- stantially towards the end of the 1990s. Publications related to climate change and coastal tourism increased considerably between 1995 and 2004 [4]. The relationship between tourism and climate is very intricate, with multiple interactions. The major part of emis- sions from the tourism sector comes from the greenhouse gas emissions through tourists’ transportation and accommodation [5,6]. The carbon footprint of the global tourism in- dustry has increased by 15% from 3.9 to 4.5 gigatons (Gt) of equivalent carbon dioxide, accounting for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it is estimated that global tourism will increase carbon emissions by about 6.5 Gt by 2025 [7]. According to a land- mark new report from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the International Transport Forum (ITF), tourism transportation emissions are predicted to account for 5.3% Sustainability 2021, 13, 10830. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910830 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability