The Trends in Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Carbon Footprint, Carbon Tax, Green Technology Diffusion from 2015 to 2024: A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis

Abstract

The aim of this study is to present a comprehensive review of carbon emissions, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon emissions pricing, trade openness, GDP per capita, R&D investment, green technology diffusion, urbanization, energy consumption, renewable energy, industrialization, and climate change research. Between 2015 and 2024 (limited to March 21st, 2024), we screened 5002 documents from the Web of Science and subjected them to analysis using the VOSviewer application and R programs. Biblioshiny (an R-based graphical interface of Bibliometrix) has been utilized to conduct performance and scientific mapping analyses for this study due to its proven effectiveness in building clear visualizations of literature using text mining functionality; and revealing the conceptual and intellectual structure of the field. The analysis revealed the publication trends and emerging themes in the research landscape. For the purposes of this research, the database was limited to open-access articles published in English, under the categories of business, business finance, economics, and environmental studies, indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Science Citation Index (SCI-Expanded). Advanced bibliometric techniques, such as co-citation analysis, cooccurrence of keywords, co-word analysis, scientometric mapping, are included in the methodology. The top five most frequently used keywords with the highest connection power are climate change, renewable energy, economic growth, energy, and sustainability respectively. This research has revealed that the journals with the highest number of articles in this field and the highest number of citations were Energy Policy, Energy Economics, Ecological Economics, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istrazıvanja, Environmental & Resource Economics, Technological Forecasting, and Social Change. In terms of the number of articles and citations by country in these fields, the USA, England, Germany, China, and the Netherlands ranked the highest. This research provides information gaps and research opportunities in the field, and contributes to shaping future research paths in this area.