Global Trends and Prospects of Community Participation in Marine Protected Areas: A Bibliometric Analysis

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are effective tools for preserving marine organisms and ecosystems against the background of climate change and intense human activities. Community participation is a helpful management approach for MPAs and has received substantial attention from researchers worldwide. To identify the research status of the field of community participation in MPAs, we reviewed 391 papers from the Web of Science with bibliometric methods and VOSviewer. The results showed that the number of publications continued to grow from 1994 to 2022, with the USA producing the most publications followed by Australia. Environmental science was the major thematic area. Studies have concentrated on community-based marine resource management, the participation mode of communities, and participatory planning and monitoring. In addition, we summarized the experience and lessons of community participation to illustrate the role of community involvement in constructing and managing MPAs. Finally, the outlook for future research was presented based on the analysis above. We recommend promoting cross-disciplinary cooperation and combining quantitative and qualitative methods to support this research. Meanwhile, it is critical to further study the specific path of community participation and fully utilize local knowledge to supplement scientific data. The current study provided an overview of publication characteristics, research trends, and primary research methods in studies of community participation in MPAs. The results will help to find ways to mitigate conflicts between MPAs and communities. We hope that our study promotes their coordinated and sustainable development and contributes to marine biodiversity conservation and human well-being.