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Exploring development and evolutionary trends in carbon offset research: a bibliometric perspective

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Abstract

This study proposes a bibliometric measure to visualize and analyze the research status and development trend of carbon offset based on 1,581 articles over the period 1900–2019. The main findings include (1) carbon offset research turned into a rapid growth after 2009; (2) environmental studies, environmental science, economics, and energy fuels are the top four research domains in publication; (3) Energy Policy, Ecological Economics and Science are the top three journals in terms of citation impact; (4) climate change, impact, emission, CO2 emission, and policy are shown to be the most frequently used keywords; (5) the top 10 cited articles cover the following five essential aspects: individual carbon offset behavior; forest and land carbon offset; transportation carbon offset; international trade carbon offset; and eco-system service-related carbon offset; (6) eight research hotspots were identified including forest carbon sequestration program, understanding carbon and uncertainty market, policy design, biomass development, Chinese province, increasing adoption, and ecosystem service commodification. These findings suggest that the carbon offset research has been evolved from the theoretical exploration at the early stage to a more diversified conversion of research outputs at the practical level in recent years. Interdisciplinary research towards individual and organizational carbon offset behaviors in a broader context of socio-economic development and cooperation among various agents is the emphasis and direction for future study.

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Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. As forests are generally darker than bare or agricultural land, they absorb relatively solar radiation, which may exert a local warming influence. This phenomenon is known as the "albedo effect."

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Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help comments from reviewers and editors.

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Funding of China (grant nos. 71804141 and 71704045) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (grant nos. 2017M620459 and 2018T111080).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China

    Jia Wei, Kai Zhao & Muxi Wang

  2. School of Public Finance and Taxation, Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, Nanjing, 210023, Jiangsu, China

    Linling Zhang

  3. School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Ranran Yang

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  1. Jia Wei
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  2. Kai Zhao
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Contributions

The conceptual framework was developed by JW, LZ, and RY. Formal analysis was conducted by MW. JW and MW contribute to the analysis of the data. The manuscript was written by KZ and JW.

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Correspondence to Kai Zhao.

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Wei, J., Zhao, K., Zhang, L. et al. Exploring development and evolutionary trends in carbon offset research: a bibliometric perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 18850–18869 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12908-8

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