Understanding Green Consumption: A Literature Review Based on Factor Analysis and Bibliometric Method

Abstract

In recent years, research on green consumption has grown at an exponential rate. Because this field of study has seen such rapid growth, research hotspots have been constantly changing, making it difficult for scholars to keep track of the most current hotspots and trends related to the topic of green consumption. In this study, we employed Citespace, COOC1.9, and SPSS 20 to map knowledge in the field of green consumption and to identify current research preferences, cooperative networks among countries and institutions, and collaborative networks among authors. A total of 2194 papers from the period of 2016–2022, sourced from the Web of Science, were collected as our data sample. The results show that the topic of green consumption has caught the attention of researchers around the world, particularly in some countries with high levels of economic development, for instance, in China, USA, and England. In addition, although there are numerous scholars who have focused on the study of green consumption, currently, there are few efficient and productive authors. Collaborative networks among authors, and cooperative networks among institutions and countries, are all still immature and need to be further strengthened. A principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the existing literature focuses on the following three topics: (1) consumer green behavior, (2) corporate green production, and (3) green marketing in social media. In addition, we conducted a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis to verify our results. Finally, we offer some suggestions intended to inform and enrich the field for future researchers.