Social capital includes collective social capital and individual social capital. Through the Elsevier, Springer link and Chinese CNKI database tools on literature retrieval, it is found that in the field of tourism area, the theory of social capital mainly focuses on the impact of collective and individual social capital on tourism development and the impact of tourism on local social capital. In other respects, the research shows that the content is concentrated on the influence of social capital on tourism and the method is mainly based on case analysis. However,there are still some shortcomings.In the future,we should pay more attention to the rural revitalization by tourism innovation,the development model of characteristic towns,the sustainability of cultural tourism,in order to use social capital theory to explain and solve the phenomenon and problems better in tourism activities and promote the sustainable development of tourism.