Determinants of citations in tourism and hospitality studies

Abstract Citation metrics are frequently used to assess research and rank journals and researchers. Nevertheless, this is still a process with asymmetric information. Tourism and hospitality research have matured within a small community and through a multidisciplinary scientific paradigm. This paper aims to understand the determinants of tourism and hospitality research citation patterns. To this end, a total of 101,968 papers within fifteen years (2004–2018) is analysed. Our empirical results suggest that authors’ prestige, the multidisciplinary nature of research, and the impact factor of journals and bibliometric articles are likely to increase an article’s citations. This paper represents a step forward in understanding the citation formation process in tourism and hospitality research.