Three decades of research on ecological economics domain: a bibliometric analysis

Purpose This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the literature in the domain of ecological economics together with bibliometric analysis. The aim is to retrospect on the evolution of the research work so far done in the domain of ecological economics. Further, our focus of attention is to know the publication trend and citation structure along with the most cited papers, contributions by authors, most influential papers, prominent journals and topmost affiliations contributing to the research domain under study. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 6,493 documents from Scopus databases is retrieved, and the papers are reviewed using the methods of bibliometrics to identify publication trends, top cited articles, topmost authors, author affiliations, etc. We employ VOSviewer for performance analysis on Scopus data to examine trends in publications, citations and citation indices over time and science mapping analysis for analyzing keyword-level and author-level networks. Additionally, we regress citations as a proxy for the impact factor of the ecological economics’ research articles on various attributes of the articles. Findings The results reveal that the research in the domain of ecological economics has evolved significantly since 1989 and emerged as one of the top research domains to encompass critical contemporary issues such as sustainability, acid rain, global warming, species extinction and wealth distribution. Approximately, 94.17% of the publications have received at least one citation. The bibliometric analysis revealed that the most productive year was 2018, with 364 publications, the highest number between 1989 and 2023. In terms of citations, the most influential year was 2009, with 25,123 citations. However, the papers published in 2002 received the highest average citations per paper. Robert Costanza and Van Den Bergh are the most prolific authors, with 40 and 32 articles, respectively, followed by Nick Hanley with 32 articles. The most cited article is “Update on the environmental and economic costs associated with alien-species in the United States” by Pimentel, Zuniga and Morrison (2005) with 3,351 citations. The article by Groot et al. , “Update on the Environmental and Economic Costs Associated with Alien-Invasive Species in the United States,” was the most influential work published in 2005. While an average of 85.58 articles was published annually between 1989 and 2005, the number increased significantly to an average of 278.72 articles per year between 2005 and 2023, surpassing the pre-2005 level. Practical implications This study positively contributes to the comprehensive understanding of new trends and emerging themes in the research domain of ecological economics. Further, it will help researchers to consider the attributes of research articles that significantly impact the citations of the articles in the research domain under study. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that conducts a bibliometric on the publications in the subject under study.