Hot spots, evolutionary trends, and future prospects for the sustainable development of the marine economy in the past 30 years: a comparative bibliometric analysis based on CiteSpace

Abstract

How to assess the quality of sustainable development is an important issue for the marine economy. This study examined studies on sustainable development of marine economy over the past 30 years using core databases from China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Web of Science. This study introduced bibliometric analysis methods and CiteSpace software to track and comparatively analyze the hotspots of studies from 1994 to 2023. This study showed that (1) the research on sustainable development of the marine economy has achieved extensive results. Researchers have already collaborated with those in China. (2) Hotspots for Chinese research are mainly focused on building an indicator system of marine economy’s sustainable development, realizing the path of sustainable development of regional marine economy, and planning the sustainable development goals of specific marine industries. In contrast, other countries focus on protecting marine ecology and identifying the path of sustainable development of the marine industry. (3) Strengthening exchange and cooperation between institutions and scholars from various countries, and further studies on the micro-paths of blue carbon sinks, marine ecological civilization and high-quality development, low-carbon development of marine industries will become new hotspots for research.