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Purpose The tourist gaze remains a key concept in tourism research. The purpose of this paper is to comprehend the theoretical and empirical development of the tourist gaze notion and its contributions to tourism knowledge, identifying potential research directions by reviewing and analyzing articles that have defined, refined and applied the concept of the tourist gaze. Design/methodology/approach The study identified 109 relevant research papers primarily through the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Google Scholar, ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu were used to capturing additional work not indexed in the key databases. Qualitative content analysis was used to map the evolution of the concept, distinguish between different perspectives and identify gaps in the tourist gaze literature. Findings This “state of the art” paper on tourist gaze outlines Foucault’s original work on gaze and power, which underpins subsequent theorization within tourism. The study identifies how the tourist gaze operates in different contexts and circumstances allowing the development of gaze theory. Importantly, the evolution of the gaze theory is presented after analyzing the knowledge gaps, the contexts in which it was used, the methodologies with which it was applied. Based on the findings, the study proposes future works of gaze with the use of technology, science, nature and social media. Originality/value This paper is among one of the first states of the art papers in tourism literature that comprehensively analyzes the works on the tourist gaze, tracing its evolution and identifying future research directions to address gaps in existing knowledge.
Samarathunga et al. (Thu,) studied this question.