Systematic Review of Studies in Sport Tourism Field in Iran

There are lots of researches which have been done in the field of sports tourism in Iran. Now is the time to look at the status, findings and approaches of these studies. The purpose of this research was systematic review of articles related to sport tourism. The nature of the research method was qualitative, applied, and as secondary studies with a systematic review approach. Samples of the research included published articles in internal scientific journals between years 2009 to 2019 that were 104 cases extracted from Noormags, Sid, Magiran, and Ensani databases. Articles were reviewed based on general dimensions of cognitive, structural, functional and citation status. Data collection tool was a researcher-made checklist that experts confirmed its validity, its reliability was confirmed through examiners reliability and iMindMap9, and SPSS21 software packages were used for data analysis. Rresults showed that the trend of publishing articles on sports tourism is on the rise, the topic of sports tourism has been favored by male researchers with a degree in sport management. Most of the researches were without a separate section of theoretical foundations and mostly were done by using quantitative methods and with a survey of senior managers and experts. Most articles have addressed the issue of sport tourism management and planning and there are needs for more attention to other fields. In addition, it is necessary to pay more attention to the research origin of the written articles, the existence of well-defined theoretical foundations, and the conduct of mixed researches.