SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
A bibliometric analysis of environmental behavior (1974–2024): Evolution of research hotspots and trends
Provisionally accepted
- 1Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, China
- 2College of Liberal Arts, Nankai University, Tianjin, China, Tianjin, China
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Abstract: In recent years, environmental behavior has become one of the most important research directions in the field of sustainable development. By popularizing environmental concepts and advocating related practices, it helps to accelerate the global process of sustainable development, reduce environmental pollution, protect the ecological environment, and thereby create better living conditions for humanity. Therefore, it is crucial to actively practice environmental behaviors. Systematically grasping the research hotspots and development trends in this field holds significant theoretical and practical value. This study employed bibliometric methods and utilized ScientoPy and VOSviewer analysis tools to conduct a systematic and multi-dimensional analysis of 6,524 articles concerning environmental behavior published in the Web of Science and Scopus databases from 1974 to 2024. The findings indicate that the volume of literature on environmental behavior has grown rapidly, reflecting its multifaceted nature and its emergence as an interdisciplinary and global research topic. Diachronic clustering analysis, based on co-occurrence networks, reveals three distinct evolutionary stages in the field. Quantitative trend analysis shows that the environmental behavior research in China and the United States was prominent worldwide, with China's publication ranking first. The bibliometric results vividly showed that "green human resource management" and "environmental awareness" in environmental behavior research are rapidly evolving into emerging research hotspots. Meanwhile, "pro-environmental behavior", "sustainability", "climate change", and "place attachment" consistently remain potential hotspots in the development of environmental behavior research. These findings provide robust evidence for understanding the evolution of environmental behavior research.
Keywords: Environmental behavior, pro-environmental behavior, Green humanResource management, bibliometric analysis, Research hotspots
Received: 01 Aug 2025; Accepted: 18 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Liu, Ma, Li, Li, Bu, Chen, Song and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shanshan Wang, wss@haust.edu.cn
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