A Systematic Literature Review on Sustainable Restaurants: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

The negative environmental impact of restaurants has received a lot of attention from academics in the last decade. After the entry of the Michelin Guide in Turkey, which is a developing country, sustainability as a concept in the restaurant sector started to implement activities related to becoming a sustainable restaurant in the last two years. The current literature review aims to synthesise research that addresses sustainability issues in the Turkish restaurants. The systematic literature review method was used to identify and totally 32 research articles were evaluated. The research profile which identifies the timeline of publications, journals, cities studied, methods used, and stakeholders discussed in these studies. The results showed that the research generally addressed green restaurants rather than sustainable restaurants and was conducted from 2015 onwards. The qualitative content analysis of the identified studies resulted in different subtitles: sustainability indicators, stakeholders and their roles, practices in green restaurants. For each subtitle, research gaps were summarised, and potential future research questions were suggested. Based on the results of the review, a research framework for understanding the ecosystem of the restaurant sector in Turkey was developed.