Understanding diverse trajectories of environmental governance studies: a citation network analysis

摘要

While environmental governance has been a significant topic in environmental studies, the shared understanding of diverse streams of literature on environmental governance remains unclear because of the vast number of publications on the topic without explicit and systemic interlinkages among them. To understand the diverse trajectories of environmental governance in a systematic manner, this paper conducts a quantitative citation network analysis on a comprehensive sample of research papers regarding environmental governance. Consequently, eight major research clusters were identified: Market; Conceptual development; Transparency and information; Scale; Global environment (State); Global environment (Non-state); Participation and democracy; and Collaboration. These categories are partly consistent with the findings of previous reviews; however, several new clusters have been identified. The central papers for each cluster are also identified as major studies to be referred to in the future research. The academic landscape of environmental governance studies uncovered in this study enables the systematic accumulation and integration of fragmented knowledge on environmental governance to improve future studies.