Knowledge Mapping Analysis of Research on Green Development

Haiyan Ye

1a*

and Yujie Huang

2b*

School of Economics and Management, West anhui university, Lu’an 237012, China

School of Humanities, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China

Keywords: Green Development, Knowledge Mapping Analysis, Circular Economy, Low- Carbon Economy.

Abstract: As the ecological and environmental problems continue to worsen, China has also assumed more

responsibility for energy conservation and emission reduction. Green development is an inevitable way to

achieve "Carbon Neutrality". This paper used the software Citespace to obtain mapping, and analyzed the

relevant literature about green development from 2010 to 2020. Finally, the trend of the content was divided

into three stages. The first stage is from 2010 to 2013, focusing on the necessity and feasibility of achieving

green development in China. The second stage is from 2014 to 2017, focusing on the construction of green

development evaluation system. The third stage, from 2018 to 2020, studied in depth how to realize the green

development in each industry.

1 INTRODUCTION

Economic growth is not opposed to environmental

protection and resource conservation. The

development experience of some Nordic countries,

such as Denmark and Finland (Huang, 2015), shows

that there is a way to achieve production and

ecological win-win development. Based on green

development technologies, these countries promote

green development with green development systems

and laws as safeguards. At the APEC CEO Summit in

2013, Jinping Xi pointed out that growth based on

excessive resource consumption and environmental

pollution will not pay off, and called for innovative

development ideas and approaches to achieve Green

development. Green development stems from the idea

of green economy, and green economy came out in

the Blue Book of the Green Economy in 1989, written

by the British economist Pearce. Green economy

pursues the harmony between social development and

ecological environment, and advocates the

establishment of an environmental “Affordable

economy”. If a country only focuses on economic

development and ignores environment protection,

sustainable development will not be achieved, and

ecological crisis and resource depletion will threaten

the survival of mankind. Since the concept of green

development was put forward, the Central Committee

of the party has issued policies and taken measures to

promote green development. Green development has

been included in the “13th Five-Year Plan”. The

strategic position of green development in the overall

situation of China’s modernization construction was

emphasized again in the "Outline of the 14th Five-

Year Plan". In this period, Chinese scholars have also

carried out a large number of research on green

development, and has achieved fruitful results. This

study used the Knowledge Graph Analysis method to

analyse the literature in recent years, to understand

the overall picture of green development, to clarify

the evolution trend of the theme.

2 ANALYTICAL METHODS AND

DATA SOURCES

2.1 Analytical Methods

With problems of environmental pollution and

resource waste becoming more and more serious,

people have been exploring how to solve these

problems, and put forward the idea of green

development. Accordingly, China has formulated a

series of policies on green development, which has

also led scholars’ research on concept, realization

path and evaluation method of green development. In

order to clarify the trend of green development in

recent years, and to understand the current theoretical

Ye, H. and Huang, Y.

Knowledge Mapping Analysis of Research on Green Development.

DOI: 10.5220/0011735600003607

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology (ICPDI 2022), pages 317-324

ISBN: 978-989-758-620-0

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

317

Figure 1: Statistics on the number of green development studies published in China from 2010 to 2019.

Figure 2: Statistical chart of the discipline distribution of green development research in China from 2010 to 2020.

frontiers, software Citespace was used to analyse the

recent literature on green development. Citespace is a

Java-based document visualization software

developed by Chinese American scholar Chaomei

Chen. The software integrates co-occurrence

analysis, cluster analysis and time series analysis,

aiming to reflect the overall situation of the literature.

2.2

Data Sources

The entire literature for this study was sourced from

the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI).

This research searched the literature in recent years

(2010-2020) under the title of "Green Development",

and obtained 491 articles in total. Based on the

statistics, the quantity and the changing trend of the

literature related to green development research in

China from 2010 to 2019 were obtained. As can be

seen from Figure 1, the number of literature will be

relatively small, with about 20articals being

published each year. Since 2016, the number of

articles published has increased significantly, with

around 100 per year. The year 2016 marks the

beginning of the “13th Five-Year Plan”. As one of the

five development concepts, green development has

received more attention.

Research on green development in China involves

a wide range of disciplines. Among them, the number

of economic literature is the largest, 258, accounting

for 52.4% of the total. Figure 2 is the statistical chart

of the discipline distribution in China from 2010 to

2020. It can be seen, in addition to economics, other

disciplines covered by the literature include

management, political science, environmental

science, philosophy, law, Marxism, human and

economic geography, sociology.

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Table 1: Statistics on prolific author of green development research in China from 2010 to 2020.

Number Author Cited Times Number Author Cited Times

1 Chuanqing Wu 6 6 Zhibin Huang 4

2 Yaobin Liu 5 7 Huaxi Yuan 3

3 Fawen Yu 5 8 Aiping He 3

4 Lei Huang 4 9 Zhizhong Zhang 3

5 Chao Feng 4 10 Jianjun Zhao 3

Table 2: Statistics of highly-cited authors in China's green development research from 2010 to 2020(Top 10) .

Numbe

Autho

Cited Times Numbe

Autho

Cited Times

1 Angang Hu 64 6 Shujing Yue 17

2 Xiaoxi Li 39 7 Shi

i Chen 16

3 Bing Wang 38 8 Jianjun Zhao 14

4 Jianhuan Huan

19 9 Lin Li 13

5 Zhengge Tu 18 10 Jun Zhang 13

3 RESEARCH THREAD OF

GREEN DEVELOPMENT

3.1 Analysis of Highly Cited

Researchers

In recent years, there have been many high-yield

authors who have achieved fruitful results in green

development research. Table 1 lists the names of the

top ten authors in terms of the number of published

papers. They have studied green development from

multiple perspectives. For example, Chuanqing Wu

and Lei Huang from Wuhan University did a series of

studies on the green development in cities and

industries along the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

The research focused on the green development

efficiency and its synergy effect, the measurement of

the green development level and the promotion path.

Fawen Yu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences, pondered the motivation and path of

agricultural green development in the new era of

China under the background of the rural revitalization

strategy and the acceleration of agricultural and rural

modernization. Yaobin Liu, a professor at Nanchang

University, explored the impact of financial

deepening on China's green development process

from a financial perspective.

A large number of research results has provided

reference and research ideas for later scholars. Many

results have been cited many times for the field of

research to make a contribution. In order to identify

the core authors who currently make a significant

contribution to green development, the Citespace

software was used to generate a high-cited authors

statistical map, and the names of the top ten high-

cited authors and the numbers of citations were

reflected in Table 2.

As can be seen from Table 2, the papers of

researchers such as Angang Hu from School of Public

Administration of Tsinghua University, professor

Xiaoxi Li from Institute of Economics and Resource

Management of Beijing Normal University, professor

Bing Wang from Department of Economics of Jinan

University, Jianhuan Huang from Hunan University,

and Zhengge Tu from Central China Normal

University were cited frequently. Among them,

professor Angang Hu 's work was cited for 64 times,

ranking the first, followed by professor Xiaoxi Li and

professor Bing Wang, both of whom were cited more

than 30 times.

Figure 3: Statistics of highly-cited authors in green

development research in China.

Based on China’s national conditions and the

development concept in the "13th Five-Year Plan":

green development, Angang Hu, director of the

National Situation Center of Tsinghua University,

explained the goals, ideas and methods of green

development from the perspective of political

economy. Xiaoxi Li is devoted to the research on the

Knowledge Mapping Analysis of Research on Green Development

319

assessment of the level of green development, based

on the "human development index", and put forward

the "human green development index". Many foreign

economists have long proposed that if resource and

environmental factors are ignored in the study of

regional development efficiency and productivity, the

calculation results will be biased. Therefore, Bing

Wang considered resource and environmental factors,

put forward the concept of "green development

efficiency" to measure its efficiency level, and used

"green total factor productivity" to measure the level

of productivity growth. From the financial

perspective, Jianhuan Huang studied the impact of

financial development on green development and its

spatial spillover effect. Zhengge Tu studied how to

improve the efficiency of agricultural subsidies and

promote agricultural growth.

3.2 Analysis of Core Research

Institutions

Through the statistical analysis of green development

research institutions from 2010 to 2020, the results in

Figure 4 can be found that there are a number of

strong scientific research institutions in China

conducting green development-related research.

Among the institutions with the highest number of

papers are: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,

Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural

Resources Research, Wuhan University, Central

South University of Forestry and Technology, Beijing

Normal University, Xi 'an Jiaotong University and so

on.

Figure 4: Statistics on core institutions of green

development research in China.

According to the statistical results, the core

research institutions were concentrated in China's

research institutes and universities, and Chinese

Academy of Social Sciences and universities in

central China have more achievements. The number

of papers published by the Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences is 19, while Wuhan University and

Central South University of Forestry and Technology

each published 8 posts. Most of the universities’

research results come from the School of Economics

and Management, and a few from the School of

Marxism. The total number of nodes is 227, the

number of Links is 29, and the Density is only 0.0009,

showing a scattered distribution basically. This

indicates a lack of connection and cooperation among

various research institutions.

Table 3: China's green development research institutions

and their number of published papers from 2010 to 2020

(Top 5).

Number Research Institution

Number of

Publishe

ers

1 Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences

2 Chinese Academy of

Sciences

Wuhan University 8

Central South

University of Forestry

Technolo

Beijing Normal

Universit

3.3 Analysis of Core Journals

As can be seen from Figure 5, the most frequently

cited journals include: China's Population, Resources

and Environment, Economic Research, China's

Industrial Economics, and Management World.

These journals are the top journals in China's

management and economics disciplines, with

relatively high quality articles.

Figure 5: Statistics of highly-cited journals on green

development research in China.

Among these journals, "China's Population,

Resources and Environment" was cited the most, with

135 citations. It is headed by the Ministry of Science

and Technology, PRC and it is the journal of the

China Society for Sustainable Development. Its main

columns include sustainable development theory

research, sustainable industry. Green development

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accords with the requirements for the inclusion of the

journal. The second most cited journal is Economic

Research, a national journal of comprehensive

economic theory, run by the Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences. Its columns involve circular

economy and ecological economy, so it also includes

some articles on green development.

Table 4: Statistics of China's green development research is

highly cited journal (Top 10).

Number Publication Name

Cited

Times

1 China's Population, Resources

and Environment

135

2 Economic Research 81

3 China's Industrial Economy 69

4 Management World 41

5 Economic Geography 40

6 Chinese Social Sciences 39

7 Energy Policy 36

8 Quantitative Economics and

Technical Economics Research

9 China Soft Science 31

10 Ecological Economics 31

4 THEORETICAL FRONTIER

ANALYSIS OF GREEN

DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

4.1

Keyword Frequency Analysis

The key words of China’s green development

research from 2010 to 2020 were counted and the

high frequency keywords were obtained, as is shown

in Figure 6. The keywords include ecological

civilization, efficiency of green development,

sustainable development etc.

Figure 6: Statistic on high frequency keywords of green

development research in China.

The keywords reveal the research direction and

main ideas of the literature. At present, the research

on green development mainly focuses on the

following aspects: necessity and feasibility of

realizing green development in China, evaluation of

green development level and efficiency, green

development mode of each industry.

Table 5: Statistics on high frequency keywords of Green

development research in China.

Number Keywords Frequency

1 Green Development 307

2 Ecological Civilization 37

3 Concept Green of Development 33

4 Efficiency of green

Develo

ment

Yangtze River Economic Belt 17

6 Sustainable Development 12

7 Environmental Protection 11

Ecological Civilization

Construction

Green Econom

Environmental Re

ulation 10

4.2

Time Zone Distribution and Burst

Term Analysis of High Frequency

Keywords

Burst term is the term that appear or use more

frequently in a short period. The time zone map of

keyword can help us identify hotspots of research in

different periods.

Through the time zone distribution map of high-

frequency keywords, the trend of green development

research from 2010 to 2020 is divided into three

stages. The first stage is from 2010 to 2013, with the

most frequent keywords being: industrial structure,

climate change, sustainable development,

environmental protection, green economy. The

second stage is from 2014 to 2017, keywords are

circular economy, green development view,

Marxism, green development efficiency. The third

stage is from 2018 to 2020, keywords are

environmental regulation, high quality development,

green industrial development, green agricultural

development.

4.2.1 Main Research Contents in The First

Stage

In the first stage (2010-2013), the research on green

development mainly explored how to achieve

sustainable development.

Knowledge Mapping Analysis of Research on Green Development

321

Figure 7: Statistics on burst term of high frequency

keywords in green development research in China.

Greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are

causing the temperature to rise. Global warming has

become a common problem for human survival. With

the rapid development of China's economy in recent

years, along with the energy consumption and

greenhouse gas emission, China has assumed

important responsibility of energy conservation and

emission reduction (Hu, 2010). We should achieve

economic development and growth, at the same time

we should also improve energy efficiency. Since the

concept of sustainable development was put forward

in 1987, the awareness of ecological and

environmental protection has been gradually

enhanced. To achieve green development, we need a

safer and cleaner development mode. Therefore,

extensive economic growth mode must be changed.

Forming green industrial system and developing low-

carbon economy and circular economy (Qiang, 2010)

are the keys.

"Decoupling" theory and Kuznets curve

hypothesis hold that economic development, resource

consumption and environmental pollution show an

inverted U trend. That is to say, with the development

of economy, resource consumption and

environmental pollution will increase and worsen

firstly, and then improve. These theories confirm the

possibility of low-carbon economic development. To

develop low-carbon economy, Zhijun Feng (2010)

believes that the following measures should be taken:

to adjust the industrial structure, develop low-carbon

technologies, use low-carbon energy, and expand the

potential of carbon sink (Feng, 2010). Based on the

development experience of developed countries,

compulsory transformation by administrative means

is not a long-term solution. Only by making use of

economic means and policies such as price and tax,

giving full play to the role of market mechanism can

arouse the initiative of enterprises in green

transformation (Huang, 2014).

Circular economy is based on the ecological laws.

The ecological damage and environmental pollution

caused by human economic activities should be

reduced through saving and recycling resource as far

as possible. Although the concepts of circular

economy and low carbon economy are different, their

intrinsic properties are the same as the connotation of

green economy (Liu, 2012).

4.2.2 Main Research Contents of The Second

Stage

The second stage (2014-2017) was based on Marxism

to construct China's green development view and

explore the harmonious development between man

and nature. In this stage, a lot of research has been

done on the evaluation of green development effects,

and the evaluation index system has been used to

measure the regional differences of green

development.

To make green development scientific and

sustainable, it is necessary to measure and evaluate its

effects. Foreign economists have recognized that

environmental factors should be taken into account

when measuring productivity. Currently, some

countries have already used green GDP as a method

to measure productivity. Many domestic scholars

have studied the assessment system which is suitable

for China's green development. For example, Bing

Wang (2014) combined the parameter Common

boundary model with Luenberger index to measure

the green development efficiency of 30 provinces and

cities in China from 2000 to 2010 (Wang, 2014)

putting CO

and SO

emissions into the framework of

total factor productivity analysis, and the regional

difference of green development level was compared.

Xiaoxi Li (2014) believes that green development is

to find a new way of economic growth, that "green"

and "development" should go hand in hand. On the

basis of human development index, resource and

environmental factors should be added to build a

human green development index system and measure

the green development index of different countries

(Li, 2014).

To achieve green development, the construction

of green cities and villages is the premise, and to

achieve the Green development of cities and villages,

the core is to realize the greening of industries (Wu,

2017). The green development level of urban

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agglomeration plays an important role in promoting

the overall green development of China. Yue Huang

(2017) used projection pursuit model, Pearson

correlation, coefficient of variation and Theil index to

analyze the spatial characteristics (Huang, 2017)

comprehensively. The development of cities depends

on the concentration of industry into cities. Shujing

Yue (2015) calculated the green development

efficiency of 96 prefecture-level cities in China by

using SBM directional distance function in view of

the impact of industrial agglomeration on green

development of cities (Yue, 2015). The results

showed that an inverted U-shaped relationship was

presented between industrial agglomeration and

green development efficiency of cities. Since the 21st

century, the problem of ecological environmental

pollution in rural areas of China has become more and

more serious. Li Xie (2016) constructed an evaluation

index system of rural green development by

combining various DEA models with Gini criteria,

and its development performance is measured and

analyzed dynamically (Xie, 2016).

4.2.3 Main Research Contents in The Third

Stage

In the third stage, how to achieve green development

in various industries has been further studied, such as

agricultural green development, industrial green

development, etc.

Extensive manufacturing development mode has

caused industrial pollution and become one of the

main reasons of ecological pollution. In December

2018, the Central Economic Work Conference

proposed to "promote high-quality development in

the manufacturing sector". Green development

efficiency is an important indicator to measure

whether to achieve high-quality development level.

Under China's economic system, environmental

regulation is an important factor affecting the

efficiency of green development. Renfa Yang (2019)

analyzed the impact of environmental regulation on

China’s green industrial development. The results

showed that environmental regulation in eastern

China had a significant positive impact on green

industrial development, while the relationship

between environmental regulations and green

industrial development in central and western China

showed an inverted "U" shape (Yang, 2019). Aiping

He (2019) used SBM-DEA directional distance

function to calculate the green development

efficiency of China’s provincial regions, and also

proved that environmental regulation has a positive

on green development. However, the competition

between local governments will lead to the lack of

environmental regulation, so it is necessary to

improve the local assessment system (He, 2019).

Yongjun Tang (2019) measured the green

development level of enterprises and found that

gender, age and other characteristics of board

members play a moderating role between

environmental administrative supervision and green

development (Tang, 2019).

Since the 13th Five-Year Plan, China has issued

many guiding documents on green agricultural

development. In 2016, the "No.1 Document" of the

Central Government, proposed to "promote green

agricultural development". In September 2017, China

issued the Opinions on Promoting Green Agricultural

Development by Innovating Systems and

Mechanisms. To realize the green development in

agriculture, we must have a scientific understanding

of its connotation. Qianwen Gong (2020) pointed out

the connotation of green agricultural development

should be defined from three aspects: low carbon,

economy and security. The level of green agricultural

development should be evaluated from three

dimensions: low-carbon production, economic

growth and safety supply (Gong, 2020). Guided by

the conviction that "lucid waters and lush mountains

are invaluable assets", Weilin Sun (2019) constructed

an index system to measure the level of green

agricultural development (Sun, 2019). Agricultural

industrial agglomeration is an important way to

improve production efficiency. Therefore, some

scholars studied the relationship between agricultural

industrial agglomeration and green agricultural

development. For example, Lei Xue (2020) tested the

spatial spillover effect of agricultural industrial

agglomeration on the efficiency of green agricultural

development (Xue, 2020).

5 CONCLUSION

According to the statistical analysis of 492 papers

titled "green development" in CSSCI database,

Chinese scholars' research on this topic has been

increasing in recent years, especially after 2015.

"Green development" has been studied in many

disciplines, including economics, management,

political science and environmental science. Core

authors with a large number of posts are Chuanqing

Wu, Yaobin Liu, Fawen Yu, Lei Huang. Authors with

high citation frequency are Angang Hu, Xiaoxi Li,

Bing Wang, Jianhuan Huang. Core research

institutions include Chinese Academy of Social

Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan

Knowledge Mapping Analysis of Research on Green Development

323

University, Central South University of Forestry and

Technology. The core journals mainly include China's

population, Resources and Environment, Economic

Research, China's Industrial Economy, Management

World. High-frequency keywords include: green

development efficiency, sustainable development,

industrial structure, circular economy, environmental

regulation, industrial green development, agricultural

green development.

In this paper, the trend of research contents from

2010 to 2020 is divided into three stages. The first

stage, from 2010 to 2013, discussed the necessity and

feasibility of realizing green development in China

under the premise of global ecological environment

deterioration. In the second stage, from 2014 to 2017,

focused on building a green development level

evaluation system. The third stage, from 2018 to

2020, focused on how to achieve green development

in each industry. From the research results on green

development in recent years, we can see that

theoretical development is constantly meeting the

needs of social development. In 2021, the

government work report proposed "carbon peak" and

"carbon neutral". China has assumed the

responsibility of energy conservation and emission

reduction, and has pledged to achieve "carbon

neutral" by 2060. China shoulders the responsibility

of energy conservation and emission reduction. How

to achieve this goal through green development is an

important issue in the future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Fund project: Anhui Province Humanities and Social

Sciences Major Project (SK2019A0433), Anhui

Provincial Major Teaching Research Project in 2020

(2020jyxm2160). Outstanding Young Talents

Support Program for Universities in 2022

(gxyq2022061).

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