Driving Forces behind Land Use and Land Cover Change: A Systematic and Bibliometric Review

Abstract

This paper is based on reviewing the literature in the past 10 years on the drivers of land use and land cover change (LULCC) in urban areas. It combines quantitative and qualitative keyword analysis of papers drawn out from the Scopus database. The analysis is primarily based on the number of mentions of keywords in the titles and abstracts of the papers, in addition to the number of keywords appearing in the papers. On the basis of content analysis, a three-level structural categorization of the driving factors was developed. These are presented in a schematic diagram, where the contextual factors are shown as influencing economic and financial factors and policy and regulation, which in turn influences transportation investments and availability, and industrial and residential location choices. Transportation availability was seen as the most frequent factor identified in the literature. This research contends that LULCC is mostly determined by interactions among these four themes in a three-level structure, and on this basis, a model is presented that illustrates LULCC drivers based on local circumstances across the globe.