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

Ecological economics is a multidisciplinary field that incorporates principles from both ecology and economics to study the complex relationships between humans and the environment. By examining the interdependence of the natural and economic systems, ecological economics seeks to develop sustainable solutions that address environmental degradation and promote social welfare. With the growing influence of the ecological environment on people and the deepening of ecological research, the theoretical research of ecological economics has gradually improved. Ecological economics serves as an alternative to traditional environmental economics by taking a more holistic approach. Instead of viewing environmental resources as externalities that can be exploited for economic gain, ecological economics recognizes the inherent value of natural ecosystems and considers them as essential components of economic systems. By integrating ecological principles into economic analysis, ecological economics aims to achieve a more balanced and equitable approach to resource management and development. In today’s increasingly interconnected world, the need for a comprehensive understanding of how human activities impact the environment is more crucial than ever.

In 1988, it got recognition as a formalized and well-structured body of knowledge with the advent of the International Society for Ecological Economics. The term “ecology” and “economics” have a common origin in the Greek word “oikos,” which translates to “house.” Ecology can be understood as the “study of the house,” while economics refers to the “management of the house,” with the house representing the world as a whole. Consequently, ecological economics involves examining and overseeing the world in a unified manner, making the most of our comprehensive knowledge and comprehension of both the natural and social components of the system. Ecological Economics was envisioned as a fusion and amalgamation of economics and ecology, going beyond their limited perspectives at that time. Rather than merely studying conventional economic and social systems, ecological economics aimed to understand them in the context of their integration and interdependence with ecological life support systems. These relationships encompassed critical contemporary issues such as sustainability, acid rain, global warming, species extinction, and wealth distribution, which existing disciplines failed to adequately address. Ecological Economics covers a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary research approaches concerning the environment. At one end, it combines economic and ecological modeling in innovative and highly quantitative ways, as demonstrated by researchers such as Ma and Stern (2006), Røpke (2005), and Spash (1999). On the other end, it involves philosophical and methodological inquiries at the intersection of political economy, ecology, and philosophy, exemplified by the work of (Martinez-Alier, Munda, & O'Neill, 1998; Max-Neef, 2005). In between these extremes, various strategies draw from social sciences, business studies, engineering, and systems analysis. These strategies aim to address significant problems that require insights from multiple disciplines or research traditions. For instance, Wiedmann, Lenzen, Turner, and Barrett (2007) and Reed, Fraser, and Dougill (2006) exemplify approaches that integrate economic and ecological modeling in a quantitative manner to tackle complex environmental issues effectively. Studies based on bibliometric analysis are increasingly utilized because they offer crucial insights into the influence, specializations, and trends within a research field, allowing for a more objective evaluation of scientific research patterns (Van Raan, 1998; Silva & Teixeira, 2008, 2009). Although bibliometric analyses have been conducted in the ecological research domains (Smith, 2010; Silva & Teixeira, 2011), they generally do not address the evolution of the topics examined or the methodologies employed in ecological economics. This paper seeks to contribute to a clearer understanding of the current state of ecological economics by providing a quantitative and comprehensive overview of the field’s development. It highlights trends in research topics and methodologies used in studies published within the domain of ecological economics, using bibliometric techniques. So, this paper complements the existing research done so far in this domain by explicitly throwing light on the evolution of the ecological economic using descriptive analysis, science mapping, publications trend, authorship, and quality various indices to reveal the impact factor as well.

To retrospect on its long journey of research domain that started in 1989, we present a bibliographic overview of articles published in the research domain of ecological economics. Retrospectively, bibliometric studies are not new, but they are now a common practice among researchers. For instance, a number of studies have done bibliometric analysis in diverse research areas on various topics (Zabavnik & Verbi, 2021; Farooq, 2022; Vaz da Fonseca & Nascimento Jucá, 2020). Moreover, researchers have also shown their interest in the bibliometric analysis of different journals (Naveen, Kumar, Mukherjee, Pandey, & Lim, 2021; Farooq, 2022; Burton, Kumar, & Pandey, 2020; Valenzuela, Merigó, Johnston, Nicolas, & Jaramillo, 2017). The exponential growth of academic and scientific publications in the mid-20th century marked a pivotal moment in the emergence of the big science era (Bagow & Altaf, 2023; Bornmann & Mutz, 2015). However, this surge in scientific literature makes it challenging for researchers to stay updated on existing research, thereby complicating the process of synthesizing previous findings (Bagow & Altaf, 2023; Broadus, 1987).To address such a problem, bibliometric is one of the approaches that use statistical methods and techniques to organize and present the literature systematically in such a way that it brings forth not only meaningful insights but also helps in unveiling the research gaps.

In this paper, we aim to propose answers to the following questions based on the bibliometric analysis:

Bibliometrics, a well-known technique to investigate bibliometric data, is commonly referred to as scientometrics and is applied to various fields in science, like quantitative studies of science, studies related to communication in science, and policies that are scientific in nature (Small, 1973). It is referred to as “bibliometric” source of science in the peer-reviewed scientific publications. Its application to various disciplines has been widely used to analyze a broad spectrum of recorded discourse (Baker, Larcker, & Wang, 2021; Gil-Domenech, Berbegal-Mirabent, & Merigo, 2020). According to (Pritchard, 1969), bibliometric tool can summarize the bibliometric data in a well-structured and organized form by using statistics and mathematics. The advent of “big science” era post 1950s acted as a catalyst to open up the scope of bibliometric techniques. This ensured the structural analysis of the literature. Moreover, the science mapping analysis, a sub field of the bibliometric methodology brings forth prospective benefits by ensuring reliability and the objectivity in systematizing literature (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017). The publications in the scientific domain show intellectual similarity that is manifested by how they exhibit common reference patterns and cite common sources (Kessler, 1963).There are several other concepts that are frequently used in bibliometric literature like the co-authorship, co-occurrence of keywords etc. In the co-authorship analysis, interlink among collaborating authors and different patterns of authorship are revealed (Koseoglu, 2016) and the conceptual or intellectual structure of the published articles are analyzed in co-occurrence of keyword analysis (Huang et al., 2018). The methods used in bibliometric analysis fall into two main categories: (1) performance analysis and (2) science mapping. Essentially, performance analysis evaluates the contributions of different research components, while science mapping examines the connections between these research components. We use performance analysis with Scopus data to address our first four questions. This analysis helps us examine trends in publications, citations, and citation indices over time. Additionally, we identify the key authors, institutions, and articles that significantly contribute to ecological economics research domain. To explore the relationship between keywords and authors we employ science mapping by analyzing keyword-level and author level networks using Scopus data. We employ VOS viewer for bibliographic and cluster analysis at both the keyword and author levels. To assess the impact of ecological economics article’s attributes on citations we perform a regression analysis using Scopus data, where we regress the number of citations for each article on its specific attributes.

We obtained bibliographic data for this study from Scopus, the largest multi-disciplinary database of peer-reviewed literature in social science research, which is widely recognized and frequently used for quantitative analysis (Duran-Sanchez, Del Río-Rama, Álvarez-García, & García-Vélez, 2019; Bartol, Budimir, Dekleva-Smrekar, Pusnik, & Juznic, 2014). Scopus contains a total of 6,493 documents published between 1989 and 2023, including 5,764 articles, 178 short survey, 49 editorials, 274 notes, 94 reviews, 49 erratum, 47 conference paper, and 38 letter. Only articles among these documents were considered for analysis.

To answer the first research question of the study, we conducted a descriptive analysis of 5,704 articles to figure out the ongoing trend of the articles and the citation structure.

In the year 1989, 18 articles have been published and the publications have increased substantially in number since then. In Table 1, we summarized the yearly growth of the articles and total citations received by articles per year. It is clearly revealed that the most productive year in terms of total publications (364) was 2018 with total cited documents (361). Total citations of 11,564 were received during this year, with an average citation of 31.77 for each document. By focusing on average citations per cited article instead of the crude measure of average citations per article (Bagow & Altaf, 2023), we find that the most influential year, based on the highest number of citations received, was 2002.On an average each article is cited at least 126.5 times in 2002S, followed by 2004 (118.55). 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 influenced work published in the year 2005.

In terms of the quality parameters of research publications, the year 2008 topped the list with an (h-index = 86), (g-index = 159), and m-index = 0.54).Further, the Table 1 also shows that the 461 articles (8.08%) received at least 250 citations, 873 articles (15.30%) received at least 100 citations, 1703 articles (29.85%) received at least 50 citations, 2,884 articles (50.56%) received at least 25 citations and 5,372 articles (94.17%) were cited at least once between the period of 1989 and 2023.

We have plotted total publications and average citation per cited publication in Fig. Between 1989 and 2023, the annual growth rate of the publications was 6.94%. The study covers two important time periods; Millennium Development Goals (2005), Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Figure 1 revealed that the production of total publications has two sharp peaks around the year 2005 and 2015. The growth of publications has increased exponentially 2005 onwards that could be attributed the Millennium Development Goals especially the goal 7 that explains the promotion of environmental sustainability and led to an increased research growth in the domain of environmental economics. Further the rise of SDGs 2015 motivated researchers to explore various new dimensions and methods to achieve the predetermined goals of “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” that has also led to a greater extent the rise in the research articles in the domain of Ecol. Econ. Between 1989 and 2005, an average of 85.58 articles were published annually, whereas this number rose significantly to 278.72 articles per year between 2005 and 2023—well above the pre-crash level of 2005. The following section presents the results of keyword co-occurrence analysis, followed by co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling. While the number of citations per referenced publication has declined in recent years, this trend is expected given the recency of the later publications in the field. Overall, the research domain of Ecol. Econ exhibits a strong and positive growth trend in both publications and citations.

Table 2 presents the most influential articles, ranked by total citations, followed by average citations per year, for publications from 1989 to 2023. At first glance, citation counts serve as an indicator of a research publication’s influence, as noted by Tsay (2009). These highly cited articles exemplify academic excellence and high-quality contributions within their respective fields. For instance, Pimentel, Zuniga, and Morrison (2005) in their study discussed environmental damages and the associated economic costs caused by the invasion of alien species in the United States. They concluded that the major environmental damages are primarily caused by invasion of alien species in the United States which adds to losses up to $120 billion per year. Furthermore, the study by De Groot, Wilson, and Boumans (2002) made a comparative analysis of ecosystem functions, goods and services in a more analytical and comprehensive manner. They explored a wide range of 23 ecosystem functions together with the goods and services that they provide and finally described various valuation methods linked to these goods and services. Among other quality works in the same line of research is the study by Dinda (2004) who surveyed the existing literature on Environmental Kuznets Curve and gave a broad overview of conceptual insights, background history and the methodological critique. It is observed from the table that the paper by Korhonen, Honkasalo, and Seppala (2018) tops the list in terms of average citations per year with 287 cites per year.

The publications presented in the Table 2 study a diverse set of topics pertaining to the ecological goods and services, valuation methods, Environmental Kuznets Curve etc. whose empirical and theoretical contributions have advocated the discussion and expanded the research domain in the ecological economics. Therefore, the presentation of such diversity of research topics highlights the growth and expanded dimensions pertaining to the research on ecological economics that aids in the development of new theories and hypotheses.

In Table 3, we presented the highly contributing authors to Ecol. Econ, their affiliated institutes and countries. Their contribution is evaluated on the basis of their publications, total citations, average citations, citation per cited publication. Other quality parameters of their work are evaluated based on h-index, g-index and m-index. Further, we use five threshold levels of citation categories to enable a more clear understanding of the citation structure of the publications.

Table 3 results show that the Robert Costanza from University of Maryland is at the top place considering his contribution of 40 articles to Ecol. Econ between 1989 and 2023, followed by Van Den Bergh from University of Amsterdam and Nick Hanley from University of Stirling with each contributing 32 articles. Also these authors have the highest number of highly cited works, with 40 for Costanza and 32 for both Van Den Bergh and Hanley.

Regarding total citations, Robert Costanza from the University of Maryland is in the lead with 6,492 citations, followed by Van Den Bergh from University of Amsterdam, who has been cited 3,631 times between 1989 and 2023. Wunder tops the list of authors in terms of average citations and citations per cited article (315.08), followed by Turner from the University of East Anglia with 264.14 average citations and citations per cited article. Robert Costanza has the highest h-index, indicating that 30 of his articles have been cited at least 30 times during that period and g-index equals to 40, signifying that 40 of his highly cited articles have been cited at least 40 times, as shown in the g-index. Lanzem (1.00) ranks first in terms of m-index, signifying that all his cited works are among the most highly cited. Additionally, the table reveals that Robert Costanza has contributed the highest number of Ecol. Econ publications cited at least 250, 100, 50, 25, or 1 times.

The productivity and influence of the authors can be assessed from various perspectives. Therefore, we provide an additional ranking method in Table 4, utilizing the dominance factor. The dominance factor is determined by the proportion of first-authored articles among the multi-authored contributions. Analysis of Table 4 reveals that the authors with the highest rankings include Ekins, P., Muradian, R., Wang, H., and Lenzen, M. However, it is important to note that there is a possibility that the authors of certain articles are listed alphabetically, which could potentially introduce biases and restrict the inferences drawn from the scientific influence based on the dominance factor.

In Figure 2, we have plotted graphically the distribution of articles involving one, two, three or multiple authors. Around 22.06% of the articles (1,258 out of 5,344) are written by a single author, while the majority (77.94%) is co-authored. Among the co-authored articles, 29.81% involve two authors (1700 articles), 23.22% have three authors (1,324 articles), 12.29% involve four authors (701 articles), 6.10% have five authors (348 articles), and the remaining 6.52% are authored by six to twelve or twenty nine individuals.

The prominent figure of authors is two who have mostly published in the subject domain under study. The current scenario of the research activities portrays the image that the researchers have a high collaboration network (Su, Zhai, & Landström, 2015; Acedo, Barroso, Casanueva, & Galan, 2006) in terms of authorship, institute and country affiliations (Finardi & Buratti, 2016). As briefly described by Yazit and Zainab (2017), the authors’ productivity and their institutional affiliations show a strong correlation.

Table 5 further demonstrates the Wageningen University shows dominance across all citation categories, with 18, 36, 57, 80, and 84 articles having citations greater or equal to 100, 50, 25, 10, and 1 respectively. One notable example of an article that have received the highest citation, as indicated in Table 2, is the work by Hein, L., Van Koppen, K., De Groot, R.S., and Van Ierland, E.C., which has received 927 citations according to Scopus.

Figure 3 illustrates the network of co-authorship among authors who have published a minimum of five co-authored documents, each cited at least 100 times, spanning from 1989 to 2023. The most prominent co-authorship cluster consists of Fridolin Krausmann from University of Alpen Adria Klagenfurt and Helmut Haberl from University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, who together have collaborated on eight publications in Ecol. Econ. Robert Costanza from University of Maryland and Brendan Fisher from University of Vermont also form the most significant co-authorship group, having contributed 4 co-authored works to the research domain under study.

Besides the networks of co-authorship among authors, the co-authorships involving institutions and countries affiliated with the authors are also significant aspects of these networks. In Figure 4, strong co-authorship networks are observed among various pairs of institutions, such as University of Leeds and University of Cambridge, Autonomous University of Barcelona and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Vrije University Amsterdam and Wageningen University, University of Maryland and Duke University, Stockholm University and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, University of Groningen and University of St Andrews, and University of Vermont and McGill University. Table 4 includes almost all the universities represented. Furthermore, the table indicates that co-authorship collaborations are more prevalent among institutions located in close geographic proximity.

Figure 5 illustrates the co-authorship patterns among the affiliated countries of the authors. The countries involved are England and the United States, Australia and the United States, Germany and the United States, and France and the United States, Netherlands and the United States. This indicates that a significant number of Journal of Ecol. Econ authors’ affiliated institutions are located in the United States, which serves as the central hub for co-authorship publications from 1989 to 2023.

Apart from the network analysis like co-authorship of authors, institutes and countries, there is another important aspect to consider that is bibliographic coupling reflecting the intelligence convergence among authors, their affiliated institutions, and countries. To visualize these connections, we utilize the bibliographic coupling of authors, as proposed by Kessler in 1963. Figure 6 represents this coupling, focusing on articles in Ecol. Econ that have been cited at least 150 times in a minimum of 10 articles. We can identify a set of clusters, 4 in number, indicating the presence of four major intellectual groups among the highly contributing Ecol. Econ authors. The proximity of authors in space reflects their intellectual affinity or closeness to one another. For instance, the nodes of bibliographic coupling between the top co-authors, Fridolin Krausmann and Helmut Haberl, highlight their prominence within the network.

In Figure 7, the bibliographic coupling of authors affiliated institutions is shown. We have set the coupling threshold to include institutions with at least 10 documents having 100 citations at least. We have set the coupling threshold to include institutions with at least 10 documents cited at least 100 times between 1989 and 2023. Among these institutions, Lund University and Vrije University demonstrate the most robust bibliographic coupling, followed by the couple consisting of Autonomous University of Barcelona and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). This network reveals that these institutions share the highest level of similarities in terms of the intellectual influences reflected in the research domain of Ecol. Econ publications.

Figure 8 illustrates the bibliographic coupling among the affiliated countries of Ecol. Econ authors. For this analysis, we chose the countries having a minimum of 50 articles published that have received 750 citations at least between 1989 and 2023. The United States is positioned at the center of the figure, indicating its prominent role in this network. Among the various bibliographic couples, the coupling between the England and the United States, as well as Germany and the United States, exhibits the strongest coupling strength.

This strength is established by the frequent occurrence of Ecol. Econ authors from these countries and their shared referencing patterns in Ecol. Econ publications between 1989 and 2023. These couplings align with the findings presented in Table 5, which indicate that the United States, England, and Australia are the most commonly affiliated countries among authors. The representation of multiple countries suggests that Ecol. Econ publications encompass global perspectives and are not solely focused on business insights from the United States.

Figure 9 displays the results of a co-occurrence analysis of the most commonly discussed themes in publications between 1989 and 2023, which have been mentioned at least 25 times. Word combinations like “climate change-adaption,” “ecosystem services-valuation,” “sustainability-EKC,” and “contingent valuation-willingness to pay” demonstrate stronger connections due to their more frequent co-occurrence between 1989 and 2023.

The last research of this study is to analyze the attributes of the articles that have an impact on the citation score of the article. We retrospect on the studies conducted by Baker, Kumar, and Pandey (2020), Baker, Kumar, and Pattnaik (2020), Baker, Kumar, and Pandey (2021), Baker, Larcker, and Wang (2022), Valtakoski (2020), Stremersch, Tellis, Franses, and Binken (2007), and got the idea about the model specification to validate how different attributes of Ecol. Econ articles are associated with the citation score. Table 6 presents the description of variables, followed by their summary statistics.

Dependent variable: Total citations refer to the number of references made to other sources in an article. It serves as a measure of the impact an article has within the academic community (Pieters & Basumgartner, 2002; Burton & Phimister, 1995; Laband & Piette, 1994; Diamond, 1989). So, we used total citations as a proxy for impact of an article. Table 6 revealed that the average citation score of articles is 62.6 with a standard deviation of 128.63. Following (Baker et al., 2020a, b, 2021b, 2022; Valtakoski, 2020; Stremersch et al., 2007), we used negative binomial regression to estimate the regression coefficients as this is the most appropriate distribution to be used when we encounter count data.

Independent variable: In their 2007 publication, Stremersch et al. (2007) introduce a theoretical framework that encompasses three different viewpoints to investigate the relationship between scientometric features of articles and authors and their impact on citation counts. Additionally, they perform a practical evaluation utilizing a selection of five notable marketing journals to confirm the validity of this framework. The Universalist perspective posits that citations of articles are primarily driven by the content itself, including its quality and breadth. In contrast, the social constructivist viewpoint suggests that citations are influenced by the authors themselves, taking into account their visibility and self-promotion. On the other hand, the presentation perspective highlights the importance of how authors communicate their message, considering elements like the title length, attention-grabbing techniques, and clarity of presentation. The number of citations received by an article is affected by its attributes, such as its quality and field of study. Consequently, five factors utilized in our analysis are derived from the article content (Baker et al., 2020a, b, 2021b, 2022; Dang & Li, 2020; Meyer, Waldkirch, Duscher, & Just, 2018; Stremersch et al., 2007).

1. Article length: The length of an article refers to the number of pages it contains. As lengthier articles are more prone to being referenced by other sources, there is a potential positive correlation between article length and citations (Baker et al., 2020a, b, 2021b, 2022; Dang & Li, 2020; Meyer et al., 2018; Stremersch et al., 2007). Therefore, it is anticipated that the coefficient estimation for article length will be positive.

2. Number of authors: The number of authors in an article signifies the total count of individuals who contributed to its creation. Articles with a higher number of authors are often more socially connected and visible, which can lead to receiving more citations compared to articles with fewer authors. As a result, it is anticipated that the coefficient estimate for the variable “Number of authors” will be positive.

3. Length of title: The length of the title refers to the overall word count of an article’s title. According to Stremersch et al. (2007), it is challenging to predict the impact of title length on an article’s citations. They discovered that the length of the title does not have an effect on the number of citations (Burgess et al., 2017). Therefore, the coefficient estimate for the variable “Length of title” is anticipated to be either positive or negative.

4. Number of keywords: It refers to indicate the count of keywords present in an article. Keywords play a crucial role in assisting potential readers in locating articles across different sources (Baker et al., 2020a, b, 2021b, 2022; Valtakoski, 2020; Stremersch et al., 2007). Articles that contain a greater number of keywords are more likely to receive additional citations. Consequently, it is anticipated that the coefficient estimate for the variable “Number of keywords” will be positive.

5. Funding: It is a dummy variable that takes value 1 if the research study is financially supported by any organization and 0 otherwise. When a research study is supported by financial resources, it is more likely to have access to better research sources (Baker et al., 2020a, b, 2021b, 2022; Dang & Li, 2020). This implies higher quality and the potential to attract more citations. As a result, it is expected that the coefficient estimate for the “Funding” variable will be positive. Out of the total 5,701 publications, this variable is assigned a value of 1 in 3,131 publications.

6. Control variables: The variable “Article age” is used as a control variable in our model. It is measured as the difference between the last year of the study (e.g. as the year 2023 in our study) and the published date of the article. The inclusion of this variable is based on existing literature in bibliometric studies, which suggests that an article’s age influences its citation count (Baker et al., 2020a, b; Stremersch et al., 2007; Ayres & Vars, 2000; Landes and Posner, 2003).

Furthermore, previous research, such as Stremersch et al. (2007) and Meyer et al. (2018), confirmed a nonlinear association between the citation and the article age, even after considering a squared time term. To account for this non-linearity, we introduce the control variable “Demeaned age squared.” Based on the findings of Stremersch et al. (2007), it is expected that the coefficient estimate for “Article age” will be positive, while the coefficient estimate for “Demeaned age squared” will be negative.

In Table 7, the correlation matrix of all the variables used in our regression model is drawn. Our primary aim is to examine how an article’s attributes impact its citations, so we specifically analyze the association between “Total citations” and the other variables using correlation analysis.

The results from the correlation analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between “Article age” and “Total citations” at the 5% level, aligning with the expectations of our investigation. The same was shown for the “Demeaned age squared” and “Total citations” but the correlation is negative and statistically significant.

The empirical study examines whether the characteristics of an article impact the number of times it is cited. The regression model is analyzed in the following manner:

where Total citations_i is the number of citations of article i, Controls_i is the vector of article i’s control variables and Attributes_i is the vector of article i’s attributes.

The results from Table 8 are presented as follows: In model I, where only the control variables are included, the coefficient estimate for Article age is positive and highly significant at the 1% level. This aligns with previous findings in the literature (Baker et al., 2020a, b, 2021b, 2022; Stremersch et al., 2007), indicating a strong positive relationship between Article age and citations. The coefficient estimate for Demeaned age squared, which captures the nonlinearity of the relationship, is negative and is also significant at the 1% level. All the independent variables have shown a significant effect on the citation score (a proxy for Journal Impact factor). While the article length and funding variables have shown negative effect, the other variables like number of authors, length of title and number of keywords have shown the positive effect.

In the year 1989, 18 articles have been published. Since then, the number of publications has grown exponentially, reaching an impressive 5,704 documents by 2023. Between 1989 and 2023, the annual growth rate of the publications was 6.94%. Over a period of time, the quality of the publications has increased. 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 et al. (2005) with 3,351 citations. The most commonly affiliated institutions with authors are the VU Amsterdam, Autonomous University of Barcelona and French National Centre for Scientific Research. The United States is the dominant country among the authors’ affiliated countries, surpassing the England, Germany, Australia, and Netherlands by a significant margin. In terms of countries, the United States (1,735 publications) and the United Kingdom (714 publications) have the highest number of publications. Regarding the quality parameters of research publications, the year 2008 ranked highest, with an h-index of 86, a g-index of 159, and an m-index of 0.54. Furthermore, as shown in Table 1, 461 articles (8.08%) received at least 250 citations, 873 articles (15.30%) received at least 100 citations, 1,703 articles (29.85%) received at least 50 citations, 2,884 articles (50.56%) received at least 25 citations, and 5,372 articles (94.17%) were cited at least once during the period from 1989 to 2023. Wageningen University shows dominance across all citation categories, with 18, 36, 57, 80, and 84 articles having citations greater or equal to 100, 50, 25, 10, and 1 respectively.

Co-authorship networks reveal that Fridolin Krausmann and Helmut Haberl have the strongest co-authorship link. Among the affiliated institutions of authors, University of Leeds and University of Cambridge, as well as Autonomous University of Barcelona and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), exhibit the strongest co-authorship links. Similarly, the co-authorship link between England and the United States, as well as the Australia and the United States, is the strongest.

The bibliographic coupling analysis visually represents the intellectual associations among the most prolific authors, their affiliated institutions, and countries. Additionally, the co-occurrence of author-specified keywords demonstrates the spatial proximity between various discussed themes. Combinations such as “climate change-adaption”, “ecosystem services-valuation”, and “sustainability-EKC” exhibit strong coupling strength due to their frequent appearance in publications.