Space syntax offers powerful tools for analyzing tourism-related spatial configuration. Tourism, in turn, provides distinctive contexts that can extend the scope of the theory. However, its application in tourism research remains fragmented, calling for a systematic review to consolidate findings and identify research priorities. This study conducts a scoping review of 104 studies published between 1999 and 2024. Using a structured charting process, we examined their research characteristics, including spatial scales, metrics, and analytical techniques. The review identifies four major themes: research on spatial structures examines how spatial forms and functions are organized within destinations; studies on visitor behavior analyze tourists’ flows, wayfinding, and experiential outcomes; work on visitor–host interactions explore co-presence, encounters, and conflicts; and research on locality and alienation investigates how tourism-induced spatial segregation contributes to marginalization and exclusion. Across these themes, persistent inconsistencies remain, such as the divide between macro- and micro-scale analyses, contrasting views on separating or integrating visitor-host spaces, mismatches between spatial metrics and tourists’ spatial cognition, and divergent interpretations of whether space syntax metrics serve as predictive or diagnostic tools. Taken together, the review not only consolidates scattered findings but also clarifies how these themes align with core propositions of space syntax—phenotype, natural movement, movement economies, co-presence, and spatial segregation. In doing so, it highlights how tourism contexts can inform the refinement of space syntax theory and outlines priorities for future research.
Shang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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