Bibliometric Analysis of Research Progress and Trends on Carbon Emission Responsibility Accounting

Abstract

The severity of global climate change is a pressing issue, and carbon emission reduction requires collaboration between producers and consumers. Carbon emission responsibility accounting is critical for distributing the tasks associated with carbon reduction. To examine the current research status and future development trends of carbon emission responsibility accounting, we used the scientific quantitative knowledge graph method and CiteSpace software. We analyzed the data from 4089 studies retrieved from the Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases, focusing on various aspects such as the number of published papers, subjects, research focuses, research content, and future research directions. In 2022, the number of publications was 657. The largest number of published carbon emission responsibility accounting documents was published by scholars from China: there were 708 published articles, 35% of the 2002 articles published in the Web of Science. The reason may be that China, as a developing country, produces more carbon emissions. In order to actively shoulder international responsibilities and slow down global warming, China strengthened its research on carbon emission responsibility, the basic work on carbon emission reduction. This was followed by the United States and England. England showed high levels of research collaboration. “Environmental science” was one of the main subjects in the Web of Science database, representing 43.96% of total publications. Research focuses included input–output analyses and implied carbon export trade. This study summarizes the literature on carbon emission responsibility accounting in terms of research perspectives, accounting principles, and accounting methods. In the future, the accounting of carbon emission responsibility at the city level considering the carbon emission responsibility sharing method including three or more shared parties and accounting for the carbon emission responsibility between the upstream and downstream from the perspective of the industrial chain can be studied. The findings of this study provide guidance to researchers and policymakers for the progression and enhancement of carbon emission responsibility accounting.