Analyzing literature trends using bibliometric and social network analysis: environmental accounting's role in fostering sustainable cities

Evaluating the effects of natural resources use in urban areas has become more important in the last few decades. An important role is played by environmental accounting, a consolidated system that considers both economic and environmental dimensions. The objective of this work is to examine both recent and previous research in the field of urban environmental accounting. Extracting from the Scopus database, this study provides insights on two datasets. The former was obtained through a preliminary search with limited related keywords. The latter was obtained with more focused and relevant keywords obtained from the first dataset. The bibliometric analysis conducted highlights important areas of research that employ environmental accounting to evaluate the sustainability of cities, by considering several publications and highly cited studies in the field. Furthermore, this study explores the main topics investigated in this field by exploring recurrent keywords. The co-citation analysis also portrays the connection between the highly cited references in the datasets. The bibliometric analysis provides a preliminary and comprehensive research contribution to urban environmental accounting and cities. Despite having certain limitations, this work sheds light on when the literature starts to grow on the topic and what are the main sources of contribution.