Abstract Technological advancements, especially Web 2.0 development, have increased the popularity of social media usage to promote ecotourism. Nevertheless, a gap exists in the systematic research on social media usage to promote ecotourism due to limited past investigations. The main purpose of this study is to identify past research on the promotion of ecotourism through social media and then explore the marketing and promotion strategies of ecotourism destinations through social media, providing good promotion strategies for ecotourism stakeholders. The present study seeks to examine social media usage, ecotourism promotional strategies, and research methods and theories employed by prior scholars to promote ecotourism. A systematic literature review was conducted by adhering to the PRISMA guidelines. A total of 210 articles were collected from two academic databases, namely Web of Science and Scopus. The screening process resulted in 34 articles being included in the analysis. The findings demonstrated that Facebook was the most frequently utilised social media platform to promote ecotourism. Simultaneously, high-quality visual content was considered to be the most crucial promotional strategy, with social media real-time interaction, hashtags, and bullet-screen interactions also attracting users. Social media influencers and non-governmental organisations also played a significant role in effortlessly disseminating more available and credible information due to respective online influences. Furthermore, a common language was a vital method to attract international tourists. Quantitative empirical research has been the most popular methodology in the current discipline, with surveys as the most frequently applied approach. Meanwhile, content analysis is the appropriate qualitative research methodology. The theory of planned behaviour is also the most frequently employed theoretical framework in this field, followed by the social network theory and technology acceptance model. The current study bridged the literature gap in social media usage to promote ecotourism and provided theoretical insights into future research.
Liu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.