Bibliometric Analysis of Published Theses on Social Entrepreneurship in Tourism: Comparison of Turkey, the UK, and the USA

The study aims to examine postgraduate dissertations in the areas of social entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship in tourism and entrepreneurship in tourism published in Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States through bibliometric analysis. In the study, a total of 126 doctoral dissertations published between 2015-2020 were reached through Proquest Dissertations, YÖK National Dissertations Center, EThOS British Library and EBSCO Dissertations databases. Theses published since 2015 are included in the scope since social entrepreneurship has started to be recognized in doctoral dissertations. The obtained dissertations were discussed in line with parameters of country where the dissertations were prepared, type of the dissertations, publication year of the dissertations, university where the dissertations were prepared, field of study of the dissertations, and research method used in the dissertations. In conclusion, it was found that Turkey was behind the United Kingdom and the United States in terms of quantity of doctoral dissertations published about social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in tourism. Social entrepreneurship in tourism has been found to be a current issue that needs to be researched and has a literature gap for all three countries.