Unveiling research trends in green advertising: a bibliometric and thematic analysis of the literature

Purpose Green advertising is essential in changing consumer attitudes toward green marketing policies and practices followed by companies. Hence, studying green advertising from a scientific research point of view has become an urgent necessity. Previous reviews have considered only the term “green advertising” for reviews and analysis. By considering all terms related to green advertising such as eco-advertising, sustainable advertising, environmental advertising, biological advertising and organic advertising, the present research conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis and identified themes and research gaps from the literature. Design/methodology/approach The paper followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework for selecting and shortlisting articles. The bibliometric analysis is carried out in two phases: performance analysis and scientific mapping. The bibliometric analysis is followed by thematic analysis to analyze related themes and identify future research gaps. R software and VOSviewer were used to tabulate and run the analysis. Scopus database was used as a database search engine. Only 334 Scopus articles in the English language from 1992 to 2024 were considered. Findings The analysis suggests that the number of publications has increased exponentially in 2018. The USA and China accounted for leaders in publication as well as citations. The top institutions publishing researches on the topic were from the USA and Australia. In the co-word analysis, five themes were identified: advertising content, green marketing, environment attributes, regulations and skepticism. Thematic analysis identified five themes dominating the green advertising literature: consumer behavior and purchase intentions, green brand management, digital and social media, greenwashing and culture. Research limitations/implications The research outcome calls for further efforts by managers, policymakers and practitioners to formulate attractive green advertisements, based on identified themes. Future research gaps were found and various important implications were made for managers, marketers and advertisers investing in green advertising, conducive to sustainability and sustainable development from a management perspective. Originality/value The study extends previous literature by conducting an updated bibliometric analysis on green advertising. The study has taken into account an extensive keyword search by including related terms to green advertising to widen the scope of analysis. The study captures interesting insights into green marketing, green advertising, and its theories, methodologies, and variables involved.