Research trends in world heritage conservation based on abstracts of Japanese academic journals

Since the World Heritage Convention came into effect, the number of World Heritage Sites has increased substantially. Although the primary purpose of the Convention is the protection of World Heritage, registration often transforms sites into tourist destinations, producing economic impacts among other effects, making it a subject of study across diverse academic fields. The purpose of this study was to clarify research trends in World Heritage conservation in Japan. To achieve this, a systematic review and text-mining analysis were conducted on 134 papers on World Heritage Site conservation published in journals issued by Japanese academic societies. The analysis revealed that research was particularly active in the 2010s; however, research themes related to economic aspects were scarce. Furthermore, text mining revealed that the keywords "tourism" and "region" appeared frequently, indicating their widespread use in World Heritage conservation research. These findings suggest that conservation approaches diversify as the number of World Heritage Sites increases. In this study, we describe trends in existing research and identify areas where future knowledge growth is expected.