Abstract:
As global participation in mountain outdoor sports continues to rise, safety concerns have become increasingly prominent in both academic research and risk management practices. This study systematically reviews 28 SCI/SSCI-indexed articles published between 2005 and 2025 from the Web of Science database, synthesizing worldwide research progress on mountain outdoor sports accidents through a data-driven lens. It outlines the current landscape of accident data sources in international scholarship and employs a four-dimensional analytical framework-encompassing victim profiles, incident circumstances, consequences, and rescue information-to identify prevailing patterns in such accidents. The study concludes with the following recommendations for enhancing risk prevention and control in China’s mountain outdoor sports: standardize accident data collection to establish a data-informed risk management system; implement the “prevention-first” philosophy to establish an education and early warning mechanism focused on “source prevention”; develop a multidimensional risk assessment and classification system to improve rescue response; optimize resource allocation via a tiered rescue framework; and promote applied research on accident causation to strengthen practical risk mitigation.