Exploring Knowledge Domain and Emerging Trends in Climate Change and Environmental Audit: A Scientometric Review

Abstract

Environmental audit is inevitably linked to climate change, one immediate target of the auditors is likely to be climate control, and the warming of the Earth and the consequent climatic changes affect us all. What is the link between environmental audit and climate change? What ties together some of these themes between environmental audit and climate change? The interaction between climate change and environmental audit has been one of the most challenging. In this paper, a scientometric analysis of 84 academic publications between 2013 and 2021 related to climate change and environmental audit is presented to characterize the knowledge domain by using the CiteSpace visualization software. First, we present the number of publications, the number of citations, research categories, and journals published through Web of Science database. Secondly, we analyze countries, authors, and journals with outstanding contributions through network analysis. Finally, we use keyword analysis and apply three types of knowledge mapping to our research, cluster view, timeline view, and time zone view, revealing the focus and future directions. We identify the most important topic in the field of climate change and environment audit as represented on the basis of existing literature data which include the Carbon Emissions, Social Capital, Energy Audit, Corporate Governance, Diffusion of Innovation Environmental Management System, and Audit Committee. The results show that climate change and environmental audit publications grew slowly, but the research are widely cited by scholars. Published journals are relatively scattered, but the cited journals are the world's top journals, and most research countries are developed countries. The most productive authors and institutions in this subject area are in UK, Australia, USA, Spain, and Netherlands. There are no leading figures, but the content of their research can be divided into six clusters. Future research content involving city, policy, dynamics, information, biodiversity, conservation and clustering social capital, diffusion of innovation environmental management, and audit committee are the directions for future research. It is worth noting that cities, policies, and adaptability are closely linked to public health.

Keywords: climate change; environmental audit; knowledge map; public health.

Figure 1

The schematic diagram of the research methods and processes.

Figure 2

The number of publications and the frequency of cited by year.

Figure 3

Research categories.

Figure 4

Journal distribution.

Figure 5

A visualization of the country collaboration network.

Figure 6

A visualization of the author co-citation network.

Figure 7

A visualization of the keyword clustering timeline network.

Figure 8

A visualization of the journal co-citation network.

Figure 9

A visualization of the keyword co-occurrence network.

Figure 10

A visualization of the keyword time zone map.

Figure 11

Article structure framework.