1119835

research-article20222022
SGOXXX10.1177/21582440221119835SAGE OpenGeng and Maimaituerxun

Original Research

SAGE Open

Research Progress of Green Marketing

July-September 2022: 1­–19
© The Author(s) 2022
DOI: 10.1177/21582440221119835
https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440221119835

in Sustainable Consumption based on journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo

CiteSpace Analysis

Yuqing Geng1 and Mukasar Maimaituerxun1

Abstract
The involvement of green marketing in sustainable consumption is becoming a hot topic in recent decades. However, the co-
themed studies of these two terms are relatively less sufficient, and more detailed integrated research should be processed.
This study uses CiteSpace to do bibliometric analysis regarding the knowledge structure and evolution of green marketing
in sustainable consumption with visualization. Results show that green marketing in sustainable consumption is a prosperous
topic with increasing annual publications. Besides, there are relatively complicated collaboration networks among institutions
and strong extensive cross-regional collaborations, and the most productive authors may not be highly cited, which
contradicts with former results of other studies. Furthermore, “green,” “consumption,” “sustainability,” and “consumer” are
more welcomed in this research domain and are at the dominating status in the recent studies; some new research directions
have emerged, and research focuses are more diversified, implying the multidisciplinary and comprehensiveness nature of
this research domain. This study enjoys novelties by combining green marketing and sustainable consumption, constructing
a knowledge framework of this domain, revealing current gaps, and proposing key research directions in the future, which
cover the deficiencies of former studies and enrich the knowledge system, and are significant references for scholars to
explore the research of this domain in the future more effectively and efficiently.

Keywords
green marketing, bibliometrics, CiteSpace, research trend, Web of Science

Introduction Vocalelli, 2017). Green marketing has become a practical

approach to decrease energy consumption and to increase
The changing consumption behaviors have drawn much environmentally friendly consumption activities; besides,
interest from both scholars and professionals. Traditional the changes in product designs, manufacturing materials
consumption pattern heavily relies on the ecological envi- selections, packaging, promotion approaches, advertising
ronment and non-renewable resources, thus is damaging the tools, and other activities of green marketing reflect both
sustainability of the environment and society. Sustainable customers’ needs and goals of sustainability (Cetin, 2018;
consumption, which is defined as the consumption behaviors Glomsrød & Wei, 2018; Shabbir et al., 2020). Green market-
and patterns that meet ecological needs, protect the environ- ing is one of the trends in sustainable marketing; carrying out
ment, and contribute to social development, has become a green marketing activities in sustainable consumption effec-
hot topic and has been regarded as a practical approach to tively and efficiently and utilizing influencing factors to
solving the problems caused by traditional consumption pat- solve problems during green marketing in sustainable con-
terns (Glavič, 2021). The United Nations proposed sustain- sumption have become everyday concerns and significant
able development goals, including the plans in the aspect of interests for both researchers and marketing professionals.
sustainable consumption, requiring us to enhance resource-
use efficiency, promote sustainable lifestyles, and gradually
achieve a green and low carbon economy (Geng & Zhang,
2021; Geng et al., 2022; Ye et al., 2020). 1
Shanghai Dianji University, China
Green marketing is defined as an integration of marketing
Corresponding Author:
that promotes sustainable marketing-related activities and Yuqing Geng, School of Business, Shanghai Dianji University, 300 Shuihua
satisfies human needs while minimizing the adverse effects Road, Shanghai, 201306, China.
on the environment (Amoako et al., 2022; Dangelico & Email: [email protected]

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2 SAGE Open

We can find that green marketing is consistent with the goals and systematically. Thus, it is necessary to summarize the
of sustainable consumption (Ali, 2021). research outcomes and to explore the apparent tendency of
There is an apparent increasing trend in the research domain green marketing in sustainable consumption research with
of green marketing in sustainable consumption. Former stud- visualized results in order to know the current frontiers and
ies explored the reasons for the development of green market- hot spots of this field, to expand new insights and perspec-
ing, which were the outcomes of ecological pressures and the tives, and to enhance research effectiveness and efficiency of
proposal of the idea of sustainable consumption; besides, stud- green marketing and sustainable consumption, to provide
ies also explored the significance of green marketing in sus- important references for entrepreneurs in the future manage-
tainable consumption (Chen, 2016). From the consumers’ ment and marketing.
perspective, green marketing can balance limited resources In order to answer these questions and cover the research
and unlimited consumer demands or needs, and it is beneficial gaps, this paper aims to use the bibliometric approach to
to enhance consumers’ sustainable consumption conscience summarize the research status of green marketing in sustain-
(Duong, 2022; Yu et al., 2019). From the enterprises’ perspec- able consumption in recent decades and provide a more com-
tive, green marketing is helpful to help firms change organiza- prehensive view of green marketing in sustainable
tional behaviors to be more environmentally friendly and consumption from different detailed perspectives. This paper
more sustainable; for instance, companies may reduce waste is meaningful mainly because it covers the gaps of former
disposals, improve recycling efficiency, develop new technol- studies which fail to review green marketing and sustainable
ogies and use more environmentally friendly materials, thus consumption simultaneously, to demonstrate how the
producing sustainable products for consumption (Ball & research of green marketing in sustainable consumption is
Kittler, 2019). Besides, green marketing helps companies evolving, to depict the characteristics and insights of this
achieve social responsibility, sustainable strategic goals, and domain, and to explore what the trend is in the future with
visions, which are also regarded as sustainable development visualized results. In this study, CiteSpace bibliometrics soft-
goals (Dalmoro et al., 2009; Huang et al., 2021). From soci- ware is utilized, which is helpful in directly exhibiting the
ety’s perspective, green marketing in sustainable consumption distribution or evolution networks of involved authors, insti-
reduces environmental pressures and solves environmental tutions, regions, journals, hot topics, and tendencies of
problems; after all, green marketing in sustainable consump- research topics with visualized results (Chen & Song, 2019;
tion integrates the concepts and practices of the ecological Chen et al., 2020), which is also rare to see in former studies
environment and social activities (Geng et al., 2021; Geng, in this research domain. This article also proposed a knowl-
Maimaituerxun et al., 2020; Sharma, 2021). These studies edge framework and prospects, which are valuable refer-
proved the effectiveness of green marketing in cleaner produc- ences both theoretically and practically for persons in both
tions and consumptions with sustainability. academia and industry business.
Besides, it is needed to have more detailed and compre- The paper provides overviews of the evolution status and
hensive explorations regarding green marketing in sustain- hotspots of green marketing in sustainable consumption
able consumption. For instance, in order to better explore the rather than providing contracts or comparisons of single arti-
contributions of green marketing to sustainable consumption cles, mainly aiming to provide overview references for future
and to better understand the synopsis and time flow of this research. In this paper, Section 2 mainly discusses the details
research domain, it is essential to know how the knowledge of data source, software selection, and research processes in
structure of this domain is formed, how the knowledge methodology. Section 3 mainly reviews the primary charac-
focuses are evolved, and what the hotspots and emerging ters of the literature (such as publication numbers with years,
directions are. However, current publications seem to ignore research subjects, categories), analyzes the collaboration net-
answering these questions, not to mention visualizing the works (institution, region, and author collaboration), the co-
results. Former scholars have summarized and reviewed citation networks (journal, reference, and author co-citation),
green marketing in sustainable consumption from different the co-occurrence networks (category, and keywords co-
perspectives, such as stakeholder, market, energy consump- occurrence), and the hotspots evolutions of the research
tion, policy-making, consumer’s purchase behaviors, strate- domain. In Section 4, we construct a knowledge framework
gies, and approaches (Ali et al., 2012; Dangelico & Vocalelli, and point out key research directions in the future. The final
2017; Farias et al., 2021; Frei et al., 2018; MacAskill et al., section summarizes our conclusions, limitations, and recom-
2021; Sharma, 2021; Wȩdzik et al., 2017). However, they mendations for future research.
reviewed green marketing in sustainable consumption from a
single perspective rather than a more comprehensive and
integrated perspective, which means they did not provide a Methods
panorama or depict how this research domain’s integral
development tendency is. To some degree, this limited future
Data Sources and Selection Process
scholars or entrepreneurs to integrate various insights into This paper selects article data from Web of Science Core
green marketing in sustainable consumption academically Collection with indexing Science Citation Index Expanded
Geng and Maimaituerxun 3

and Social Sciences Citation Index (WoS). The source is CiteSpace: (1) by classifying clusters of the data, it can point
chosen mainly because of the following reasons: (1) WoS out knowledge bases, networks, hotspots, tendencies of
covers great highly-recognized peer-reviewed articles with research fields visually, providing insights for future
wide ranges of research fields, making the research results research; (2) it can analyze the correlations of networks from
more convincing; (2) article details such as authors, institu- various perspectives such as authors, countries, cited jour-
tions, countries, journals, and citations, are included in the nals, and cited authors; (3) it analyzes results quantitatively,
database, making more detailed analysis possible; (3) the which is more suitable to analyze a large number of publica-
database is easily accessible by most scholars around the tions in a limited time with convincing results compared with
world, making the research results more representative (Yang qualitative analysis methods; (4) it is easy to download and
et al., 2021). free to use, and the time to process data is comparatively tiny,
During the data collection procedure (data were collected enhancing the research efficiency greatly (Wu et al., 2020;
on 1st September 2021), this paper used “topic” to search Zhang et al., 2021). This paper used version 5.8.R2.
relative terms; the topic in the search field included title,
abstract, and keyword. In detail, topic = {[green sale*] or
[green market*] or [green business*]} and {[sustain* con-
Methodology
sumption] or [sustainable consum*]}; the search was limited There are five steps in this study, which are as follows.
by language (English) and document type (article and
review); as we would like to provide a more integrated per- (1) Demonstrate the statistical characteristics of the
spective of green marketing in sustainable consumption, we research domain, including the number of publica-
did not refine categories (categories of environmental sci- tions per year, the leading journals, and the main cat-
ences, environmental studies, energy fuels, food science egories publishing papers with the topic of green
technology, urban studies, management, law, business, eco- marketing in sustainable consumption. The statistical
nomics, development studies, and so on, were included). characteristics research helps us understand whether
After screening the title of the publications and sorting out the domain is popular and what journals and catego-
irrelevant papers, 1,456 articles were selected as the data- ries welcome this domain more.
base. The database meets the following criteria: (1) the data (2) Process the collaboration network analyses of institu-
wholly or partly reflect the idea or concept of green market- tions, regions, and authors respectively to evaluate
ing in sustainable consumption by explaining the correla- current cooperation networks.
tions between green marketing in sustainable consumption (3) Process the co-citation network analyses from the
and other factors; (2) the data contribute to the research of journal, reference, and author perspectives, respec-
green marketing in sustainable consumption (Wang et al., tively; such analyses help us understand the current
2021). research themes and status of the domain.
(4) Process the co-occurrence analysis to evaluate the
evolution of green marketing in sustainable con-
Analysis Methods Selection sumption and predict the potential hotspots in future
Several software or methods can process bibliometric analy- research.
sis with abundant publications quantitatively, such as RefViz, (5) Construct the knowledge framework and suggest
HistCite, SATI, and CiteSpace. They enjoy advantages and future key research directions based on the former
disadvantages. For instance, RefViz enjoys the advantage of analysis results, which stimulate ideas of other
the simplicity of operation, whereas it is mainly applicable to scholars.
group and keywords analyses only, and comprehensive anal-
yses from various aspects are less likely. HistCite is also easy Figure 1 shows the process of the research.
to operate, whereas it is mainly used to analyze word fre-
quencies, and it is impossible to analyze the co-citation or
co-occurrence status of publications and to depict the corre- Results
lations among factors. SATI compensates for the disadvan-
Publication Statistical Analysis
tages of HistCite, while it is impossible to depict the timeline
graph and help us discover the evolutionary tendencies of the Number of publications by years. Figure 2 exhibits the devel-
research domain. opment trend of the number of publications in green market-
CiteSpace is easy to operate and solves the problems of ing in sustainable consumption. We can find that there are
those methods: it provides visualized interpretations to help apparent increases in the publications in the recent two
us explore the knowledge structure and depicts the correla- decades, proving that this topic is gradually obtaining more
tions among factors and the evolutions of the research attention from the academic community. Besides, we can
domain (Liu, Ma et al., 2021; Liu, Luo et al., 2021; Wang also find that 1,121 papers are published in the recent decade
et al., 2021). In detail, there are some other advantages of (2011–2020, accounting for 76.99% in the dataset), among
4 SAGE Open

Figure 1. Research process.

Figure 2. Number of publications by years.

which 850 papers are published in the recent 5 years (2016– ignore analyzing the numbers of publication of 2021. These
2020, accounting for 58.38%), proving the timeliness, nov- findings demonstrate that green marketing in sustainable
elty, and significance of green marketing in sustainable consumption is an emerging and hot topic, and we suggest
consumption research. It is noticeable that there are rela- that researchers devote more resources to this research
tively fewer publications in 2021 than in the previous year domain.
mainly because the data of this study are collected in Sep-
tember 2021, meaning some papers published in the later Number of publications by journals. We can find that 443
months could not be collected; therefore, we at this moment journals have published articles relating to green marketing
Geng and Maimaituerxun 5

Table 1. Number of Publications by Journals.

Ranking Journals 5-year IF Count Percentage (%)

1 Sustainability 3.473 189 12.981
2 Journal of Cleaner Production 9.444 168 11.538
3 Business Strategy and the Environment 11.923 36 2.473
4 International Journal of Consumer Studies 3.967 29 1.992
5 Resources Conservation and Recycling 9.970 27 1.854
6 Renewable Sustainable Energy Reviews 14.916 25 1.717
7 Journal of Business Research 8.488 20 1.374
8 Sustainable Production and Consumption 4.929 20 1.374
9 Energy Policy 6.581 16 1.099
10 Sustainable Development 6.427 16 1.099

Table 2. Number of Publications by Categories.

Ranking Categories Count Percentage (%)

1 Environmental sciences 533 36.607
2 Green & sustainable science & technology 481 33.036
3 Environmental studies 362 24.863
4 Business 294 20.192
5 Environmental engineering 213 14.629
6 Management 161 11.058
7 Energy fuels 100 6.868
8 Economics 94 6.456
9 Operations research management science 55 3.777
10 Food science technology 52 3.571

in sustainable consumption in the recent two decades. Table operations research management science, and food science
1 illustrates the top journals publishing papers regarding technology are also essential categories in green marketing
green marketing in sustainable consumption. We can see in sustainable consumption research. These categories con-
that the most productive journals in this field are Sustain- tain different disciplines (such as science, engineering, and
ability, Journal of Cleaner Production, Business Strategy business), proving the comprehensiveness and intersection-
and the Environment, International Journal of Consumer ality of this domain and also indicating the currently focused
Studies, and Resources Conservation and Recycling aspects regarding green marketing in sustainable consump-
(accounting for 12.981%, 11.538%, 2.473%, 1.992%, and tion research.
1.854% respectively). Besides, the top 10 journals publish
37.501% of the total publications in the field, and these
Collaboration Analysis
journals enjoy relatively high impact factors (IF), proving
that though there are many journals publishing articles Institution collaboration network. Table 3 exhibits the coopera-
about this field, most articles are centered in the limited tion status among institutions globally. Most of the top 10
numbers of highly-ranked journals. These findings provide institutions are in Europe (6 out of 10), China, and Australia
valuable references for researchers to find target journals in (two institutions respectively), implying green marketing in
this domain more precisely. sustainable consumption is the highly focused topic in the
institutions of these regions. Besides, the University of Shef-
Number of publications by categories. Table 2 illustrates the field in the UK ranks in the top tier in publication numbers
top 10 categories of green marketing in sustainable con- (17), year of the first paper (2009), and centrality (0.08;
sumption. We can find that 533 papers come from environ- higher centrality means there are stronger collaborations or
mental sciences, 481 from green & sustainable science & connections between the observed node and other nodes)
technology, 362 from environmental studies, 294 from busi- (Azam et al., 2021; Ye et al., 2020), demonstrating its quan-
ness, and 213 from engineering environment (accounting for titative and qualitative contributions to green marketing in
33.607%, 33.036%, 24.863%, 20.192%, and 14.629% sustainable consumption. Besides, the centrality scores
respectively); management, energy fuels, economics, reached 0.05 for both the University of Southern Denmark
6 SAGE Open

Table 3. Institution Collaboration Network.

Ranking Institutions Country Count Centrality Year

1 Univ. Sheffield UK 17 0.08 2009
2 Bucharest Univ. Econ. Studies Hungary 13 0.02 2016
3 Univ. Southern Denmark Denmark 12 0.05 2014
4 Hong Kong Polytech. Univ. China 11 0.05 2012
5 Univ. Kent UK 10 0.01 2015
6 Univ. Helsinki Finland 10 0.03 2013
7 Lund Univ. Sweden 10 0.00 2005
8 Curtin Univ. Australia 9 0.03 2015
9 Chongqing Univ. China 9 0.03 2013
10 Swinburne Univ. Technol. Australia 9 0.01 2017

Region collaboration network. Table 4 exhibits the collabo-

ration status among regions. There are several findings.
First, the USA leads the research of green marketing in
sustainable consumption in many aspects: the number of
publications is the first (257), the centrality is the highest
(0.28, meaning it has more relations and cooperation with
other regions in this research domain), and the year to start
the research is the earliest among the top 10 regions (1997);
this proves that the USA acts as a global leader in this
research domain. The second finding is that regions with
more collaborations are mostly rich or developed. In detail,
8 out of 10 are the developed regions; China and India are
the only two recognized developing regions in the top 10
list. That may be because there are usually large research
budgets, outstanding research staffs, convenient transpor-
tation facilities, and communication infrastructures in
developed regions, so there are more opportunities and
possibilities for the staff to participate in international con-
Figure 3. Visualization of institution collaboration network ferences and initiate international cooperation research
(Nodes = 1,291, Links = 1,951).
programs (Geng & Yan, 2021; Geng & Zhao, 2020; Geng,
Zhu et al., 2020). Besides, China and India are on the list
and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, demonstrating their mainly because of their vast population and fast-growing
publications are well cooperated and can be well-referred in economy, so that they can enjoy scale effects brought by
the research. demographic dividends and devote increasing resources in
The visualization of the institution’s collaboration net- collaboration research (Geng & Zhang, 2020; Golley &
work is shown in Figure 3. It can be found that there are rela- Tyers, 2012; Joe et al., 2018).
tively complicated collaboration networks among institutions Figure 4 is the cluster view of the region collaboration
globally, and the collaboration networks can be summarized network. We can see extensive solid cross-regional collabo-
as “more collaborations within institution clusters, while rations; take the top four regions with regional collaborations
fewer collaborations among different institution clusters.” as examples, they all enjoy cooperation with each other and
For instance, there is a prominent self-isolated cooperative with other regions, which proves that the research of green
cluster led by the University of Exeter, indicating that the marketing in sustainable consumption has achieved exten-
institutions within this cluster have close cooperation with sive regional cooperation. Besides, we can also find that the
each other. In contrast, they are less cooperative with other start dates of cooperation among regions vary. In the top four
institutions in other clusters. This situation is mainly because regions with regional collaborations, the USA and England
different institution clusters have different research focus or initiated regional cooperation early. In contrast, PR China
emphases, making collaborations among institution clusters and Italy started cooperation in later stages, proving the
less sufficient. In the future, researchers can try to expand potential and synergy of both China and Italy in this research
collaborations among institutions. field. Furthermore, the regional collaborations can be divided
Geng and Maimaituerxun 7

Table 4. Region Collaboration Network. Table 5. Author Collaboration Network.

Ranking Regions Count Centrality Year Ranking Authors Count Centrality Year
1 USA 257 0.28 1997 1 Kannan Govindan 6 0.00 2015
2 PR China 226 0.08 2010 2 Joseph Sarkis 5 0.00 2014
3 England, UK 141 0.10 2008 3 Seonaidh Mcdonald 4 0.00 2009
4 Italy 90 0.04 2008 4 Achim Spiller 4 0.00 2015
5 Germany 86 0.04 2008 5 Juiche Tu 4 0.00 2013
6 Spain 77 0.04 2008 6 Janine Fleith De Medeiros 4 0.00 2014
7 Australia 75 0.08 2012 7 Sunil Luthra 4 0.00 2018
8 India 67 0.03 2007 8 Cesare Amatulli 4 0.00 2017
9 Taiwan, China 64 0.01 2011 9 Eunju Ko 4 0.00 2017
10 Netherlands 54 0.06 2008 10 Ingo Balderjahn 4 0.00 2017
11 Jose Arturo Garzareyes 4 0.00 2018
12 Julianna Priskin 4 0.00 2017
13 Jose Luis Duarte Ribeiro 4 0.00 2014
14 Christian Fuentes 4 0.00 2014

Figure 5 shows the cluster view of the author collabora-

tion network. Although there are collaborations among
authors, such collaborations are relatively isolated; in other
words, research teams operate in this domain, but different
teams lack enough communication. In detail, there are two
outstanding research teams whose influential leaders are
Seonaidh Mcdonald and Kannan Govindan, respectively
(both are also top collaborated authors). As a result of this,
we suggest scholars increase cooperation regarding this topic
with others, which is proved useful to enhance research
Figure 4. Visualization of region collaboration network effectiveness and efficiency (Li et al., 2021; Sun et al., 2021).
(Nodes = 127, Links = 596).

Co-citation Analysis
into five clusters: American and Romanian researchers
mainly focus on green marketing for university students; Journal co-citation network. Table 6 illustrates the top jour-
those in Europe (Sweden, Greece, Germany, Netherlands, nals where the papers on green marketing in sustainable
and Spain) mainly focus on good practices of green market- consumption are the most cited. There are several new find-
ing in sustainable consumption; some regions (Canada, ings. Firstly, journals with high impact factors are more
Denmark, and France) initiate research regarding decision- likely to be cited. In detail, 7 out of the top 10 journals are
making techniques; some (Brazil and Italy) concern orphan in Quarter 1 of WoS with IF higher than six, indicating
crops together with their green marketing; some researchers these journals are the core ones in the research domain of
in Asian regions (Malaysia, India, Taiwan China, PR China, green marketing in sustainable consumption. Also, the top
and South Korea) are more likely to focus on green innova- journal (Journal of Cleaner Production) enjoys high cen-
tion of green marketing in sustainable consumption. trality (0.07), indicating it plays a vital role in connecting
other journals in the co-citation network. Besides, these
Author collaboration network. Table 5 exhibits the global col- journals have been cited in the early stages; for instance,
laboration networks among authors in the research field. papers published in Journal of Business Research and Jour-
Generally, the collaborations among authors are not as com- nal of Business Ethics have been cited since the last century
mon as collaborations among institutions or regions: only 14 (1998). Furthermore, there is a journal in the emerging sci-
out of the 554 counted authors share more than three times’ ence citation index edition (Journal of Consumption Mar-
collaborations; besides, the top two authors with most col- keting) with a high centrality (0.11), indicating its potential
laborations in this research field are Kannan Govindan and influential impacts on the research in this field. These
Joseph Sarkis, proving these two researchers have compara- highly co-cited journals provide valuable references for
tively more robust co-authorship relations with others. future studies in green marketing in sustainable consump-
Indeed, these authors’ centralities (0.00) imply weak collab- tion; researchers may understand which journals to submit
orations with others. to if they want their papers to be highly cited.
8 SAGE Open

Figure 5. Visualization of author collaboration network (Nodes = 4,364, Links = 8,739).

Table 6. Journal Co-citation Network.

Ranking Journals 5-year IF Count Centrality Year

1 J. Clean. Prod. 9.444 785 0.07 2006
2 J. Bus. Res. 8.488 480 0.01 2003
3 J. Bus. Ethics. 7.830 430 0.01 1998
4 Ecol. Econ. 6.233 424 0.01 1998
5 Sustainability 3.473 405 0.00 2013
6 J. Marketing 15.325 382 0.02 2004
7 J. Consum. Mark. N/A (ESCI) 346 0.11 2003
8 Energy Policy 6.581 346 0.10 2003
9 J. Marketing Res. 8.173 320 0.02 2002
10 Int. J. Consum. Stud. 3.967 313 0.03 2006

Figure 6 shows the visualized clusters of the journal co- Reference co-citation network. Table 7 exhibits the 10 most
citation network. It is found that there are wide ranges of cited documents in green marketing in sustainable con-
categories of the co-cited journals. For instance, the top 10 sumption research. Generally, the most cited documents
categories (operations research & management science, are about consumer intentions and behaviors. In detail,
geography, medicine, business, nutrition & dietetics, chemis- four cited articles validate the theory of planned behavior
try, environmental engineering, development studies, man- and its application to predicting consumers’ green con-
agement, energy & fuels) can be observed in the journal sumption intention (Moser, 2015; Paul et al., 2016; Yadav
co-citation clusters, indicating that the research and the jour- & Pathak, 2016, 2017); another three discuss the affecting
nals cited about the topic of green marketing in sustainable mechanism of purchasing eco-friendly products’ inten-
consumption is multidisciplinary. That is mainly because tions or behaviors of consumers (Barbarossa & De Pels-
green marketing in sustainable consumption interacts with macker, 2016; Chekima et al., 2016; Gleim et al., 2013).
other factors or systems such as ecosystem, agricultural sci- Besides, there is an article discussing the interactions
ence & technology, social activities, and psychology, leading between circular economy, green marketing, and green
to multidisciplinary studies in different fields (Melović et al., consumptions (Ghisellini et al., 2016), a review looking
2020; Petcharat et al., 2020; Ramos-Hidalgo et al., 2022; Sun back empirical publications on green purchase behaviors
& Wang, 2019). That also provides a meaningful insight that and examining attitude-behavior inconsistencies in the
researchers can expand their views from a specific discipline field of green purchasing (Joshi & Rahman, 2015), and a
to broader disciplines when researching both theories or book introducing various statistical methods which are
applications of green marketing in sustainable consumption. applicable to analyze problems in green marketing
Geng and Maimaituerxun 9

Figure 6. Visualization of journal co-citation network (Nodes = 2,223, Links = 8,544).

Table 7. Reference Co-citation Network.

Ranking Journals Count Centrality Year

1 Paul J., J. Retail. Consum. Serv., V29, P123 41 0.00 2016
2 Yadav R., J. Clean. Prod., V135, P732 37 0.00 2016
3 Hair JF. Multivariate Date An, V7th Ed., P0 27 0.00 2014
4 Chekima B., J. Clean. Prod., V112 25 0.00 2016
5 Joshi Y., Int. Strateg. Manag. Re., V3 25 0.00 2015
6 Yadav R., Ecol. Econ., V134, P114 24 0.00 2017
7 Ghisellini P., J. Clean. Prod., V114, P11 24 0.00 2016
8 Gleim MR., J. Retailing, V89, P44 23 0.00 2013
9 Moser AK., J. Consum. Mark., V32, P167 22 0.02 2015
10 Barbarossa C., J. Bus. Ethics, V134, P229 21 0.01 2016

in sustainable consumption (Hair, 2011). The top-cited include the categories of B2B firm and enterprises policies,
documents imply that consumer intention or behavior is a which indicate enterprise activities are closely related to
highly focused topic in the research of green marketing in green marketing in sustainable consumption; the aspect of
sustainable consumption. the customer includes the categories of planned behavior,
The cluster view of the co-cited references is shown in gentrification, customer-centric approach, and environmen-
Figure 7, demonstrating the main categories of the cited doc- tal product, implying consumers’ behaviors are closely
uments. The top 10 categories of the co-cited references are related to green marketing; the methodology aspect include
filtered, and these categories can be classified into four empirical research and information technology, which
aspects: energy, enterprise, consumer, and methodology. The emphasize the research patterns of green marketing in sus-
energy aspect includes the following categories: electric util- tainable consumption. When looking up the most co-cited
ity restructuring and designing renewable electricity support, documents and reviewing the clusters of the co-citation net-
which imply that clean energy is contributive to green mar- work, scholars may find new insights and ideas in green mar-
keting and sustainable consumption; the enterprise aspect keting in sustainable consumption research.
10 SAGE Open

Author co-citation network. Table 8 shows the top 10 cited result again proves the integration and comprehensiveness of
authors. Generally, the top 10 authors have higher cited the research of green marketing in sustainable consumption.
counts: the top seven cited authors are cited more than 100 The timeline visualization of the author’s co-citation
times. Specifically, the top-cited author is Ajzen I, whose network is shown in Figure 8. We can find that the clusters
cited count is 176, followed by Peattie K and Hair JF, whose were formed in 1995, whose main focuses were “emerging
counts are 169 and 155, respectively. Thogersen J enjoys the market” and “planned behavior.” The former cluster mainly
highest centrality in the top 10 co-cited list (0.08), indicating focuses on how green marketing is shaped and how it satis-
that this author’s transformative potential to contribute to the fies new market opportunities, and the latter mainly focuses
study of this domain is significant (Fang et al., 2018). on how the planned behavior theory affects consumers’
Besides, there is a finding that publications by professional expectations, intentions, and behaviors in green marketing
institutions can also be cited: European Commission as the activities. “Planned behavior” forms the most prominent
author is cited 112 times. cluster with the most prolonged duration and with the most
Furthermore, if we compare author collaboration net- co-cited authors researching in this field, which provides
works and author co-citation networks, we may find incon- abundant cases and references for future scholars, and
sistency of authors: the most productive authors may not be which reflects the significant focus on this field from the
highly cited, which contradicts former results of other stud- academics. At the same time, co-cited authors are also clus-
ies (Fang et al., 2018). That is mainly because the research tered into different categories such as “environmental pro-
domain of green marketing in sustainable consumption is file,” “life circle assessment-based information,” “polar
much more integrated and combines various aspects and lipidome,” “sustainable development,” “full-scale transi-
domains so that the citing references can be varied. This tion,” “gentrification,” and “recent development”; these
clusters provide insights or ideas of scientific studies in
green marketing in sustainable consumption. However,
some of these clusters experience relatively limited dura-
tion periods, possibly mainly because the orientation and
prevalence of the customer-oriented behavior research
leads to the decrease of environment or product-oriented
productive process research.

Co-occurrence Analysis
Category co-occurrence. Table 9 exhibits the top 10 co-occur-
rence of categories in the research of green marketing in sus-
tainable consumption. The top categories are mainly related
to the environment and business. In detail, among the top 10
co-occurrence categories, four categories are related to the
environment (environmental sciences & ecology, environ-
mental sciences, environmental studies, and environmental
engineering, with the counts of 680, 531, 358, and 212),
Figure 7. Visualization of reference co-citation network demonstrating the field of environment is highly concerned
(Nodes = 3,601, Links = 11,740). in this research domain. Besides, the environmental sciences

Table 8. Author Co-citation Network.

Ranking Authors Count Centrality Year

1 Ajzen I 176 0.04 2003
2 Peattie K 169 0.03 2006
3 Hair JF 155 0.00 2012
4 Fornell C 141 0.02 2012
5 Thogersen J 132 0.08 2006
6 Stern PC 112 0.07 2003
7 European Commission 112 0.00 2013
8 Young W 94 0.00 2013
9 Chen YS 90 0.00 2013
10 Kotler P 88 0.05 2007
Geng and Maimaituerxun 11

Figure 8. Cluster visualization of author co-citation network (Nodes = 2,921, Links = 10,867).

Table 9. Category Co-occurrence.

Ranking Category Count Centrality Year

1 Environmental sciences & ecology 680 0.42 1992
2 Environmental sciences 531 0.14 1992
3 Science & technology—other topics 486 0.10 2003
4 Green & sustainable science & technology 470 0.03 2003
5 Business & economics 404 0.21 1997
6 Environmental studies 358 0.06 1994
7 Engineering 316 0.56 1992
8 Business 275 0.03 1997
9 Environmental engineering 212 0.00 1992
10 Management 154 0.04 1997

& ecology category has a high centrality of 0.42, demonstrat- science & technology, and environmental engineering. The
ing its vital position in the research of green marketing in cluster of multidisciplinary materials science mainly consists
sustainable consumption. Furthermore, three categories are of categories of materials and chemistry (science or engi-
related to business (business & economics, business, and neering); the cluster of environmental studies mainly refers
management, with the counts of 404, 275, and 154), illustrat- to business behaviors of green marketing in sustainable con-
ing that business categories are also the hotspots and frontier sumption, such as green & sustainable science & technology,
domains in this research field. Comparing Table 2 (number business & economics, environmental science, ecology, and
of publications by categories) and Table 9 (category co- related studies, etc.; the cluster of industrial engineering
occurrence), we may find that 7 of the top 10 categories are mainly explores the supportive engineering activities or pro-
the same, demonstrating similarities in categories in this grams of green marketing and sustainable consumption, such
research domain between the publication and co-occurrence as manufacturing engineering, industrial engineering, opera-
categories. tions research, management science, computer science, etc.;
Figure 9 exhibits the cluster view of the main categories the cluster of ethics mainly discusses the business issues
co-occurrence in the research of green marketing in sustain- from social perspectives, such as interdisciplinary social sci-
able consumption, which helps us explore the subject distri- ences, psychology, ethics, etc.; the cluster of food science &
butions of this research domain. Generally, there are six main technology mainly discusses the interactions between human
category clusters: multidisciplinary materials science, envi- health and green marketing in sustainable consumption, such
ronmental studies, industrial engineering, ethics, food as public & occupational health, agriculture, food science &
12 SAGE Open

Figure 9. Cluster visualization of category co-occurrence (Nodes = 142, Links = 700).

Table 10. Keyword Co-occurrence. consumption; the frequently counted keywords reflect the
most focused contents and the latest development hotspots of
Ranking Keyword Count Centrality Year
the domain (Zhang et al., 2020). The keywords are closely
1 green 302 0.05 2003 related to green marketing and sustainable consumption.
2 consumption 245 0.08 2003 Specifically, among the top 10 co-occurrence keywords,
3 behavior 172 0.07 2005 “green,” “consumption,” “sustainability,” and “consumer”
4 impact 154 0.10 2003 are the exact words of the domain of green marketing in sus-
5 attitude 138 0.04 2009 tainable consumption (with counts of 302, 245, 134, and 122,
6 product 138 0.11 2003 respectively). Besides, “green,” “consumption,” “behavior,”
7 sustainability 134 0.03 2011 “impact,” and “attitude” are the high-frequency keywords
8 consumer 134 0.03 2006 among the top 10, meaning these keywords are more wel-
9 performance 122 0.06 2002
comed and valued by scholars in this research domain and
10 management 115 0.07 1997
are at the dominating status in the recent studies.
Figure 10 shows the cluster timeline map of keywords co-
technology, agricultural economics & policy, etc.; the cluster occurrence. The keyword co-occurrence timeline map with
of environmental engineering studies energy-related issues clusters is significant due to the following two reasons: first,
in green marketing and sustainable consumption, such as publications with relatively strong internal relations are
biotechnology & applied microbiology, energy & fuels, sci- grouped together and thus form a cluster, which illustrates a
ence & technology, etc. The results provide valuable hints research focus aspect and hotspot; second, keywords to some
that the categories of this research domain are multidisci- degree represent and generalize the core idea and research
plinary, meaning it is needed for researchers to expand their contents of publications; those with high frequencies are
research focuses and interests in different categories in addi- proper to track the latest research hotspots at various research
tion to environment and business categories. It is also possi- periods. We can see that there are 10 clusters for the key-
ble for researchers to submit research manuscripts of this words co-occurrence of this research domain. The cluster
domain to journals in different disciplines. with the most prolonged duration is cluster #2 “economy”
(from 1994 to 2019), mainly focusing on the related eco-
Keywords co-occurrence. Table 10 depicts the keywords co- nomic issues of green marketing in sustainable consumption.
occurrence situations of green marketing in sustainable At the beginning stage (1994–1995), economy and
Geng and Maimaituerxun 13

Figure 10. Cluster visualization of keyword co-occurrence (Nodes = 457, Links = 2,924).

commitment are the main focuses (King & Borchardt, 1994; power, efficiency, renewable energy, and emission), life
Oskamp, 1995). In the middle age (2002–2011), policy, tech- cycle assessment (including decision making, eco-design,
nology, innovation, and consumption choices become the and input-out analysis), conservation (product certification,
main hotspots in the cluster of the economy (Arkesteijn & public health, and fishery), pathfinding robot simulation
Oerlemans, 2005; Jim & Chen, 2007; Press & Arnould, (including the orientation, selection, scale, and recovery of
2009; Rivera, 2002), proving the discussions of the eco- the robot simulation), sustainable practice (addressing the
nomic aspect of green marketing in sustainable consumption adoption of it, corporate social responsibility, and green elec-
have shifted from pure economic theories to various com- tricity), and small business (addressing the role of companies
plex factors affecting the economy. Recently (2012–2019), in green marketing in sustainable consumption, including
the implementation and business model of the economy in corporate environmentalism, response, and small & middle
this research domain has become the hotspot (Bastas & enterprise).
Liyanage, 2019; Nilsson & Nykvist, 2016). The cluster with
the latest duration is “organic food” (cluster #0). In 2003, Keyword bursts. Keywords bursts illustrate the hotspots and
green, consumption, and product model were the main emerging trends of the research domain, proving these key-
hotspots (Kalmykova et al., 2018; Montalvo Corral, 2003; words are mainly focused on academia. Figure 11 demon-
Rios et al., 2003); then the hotspots witnessed changes to strates the top 20 keywords with the strongest citation bursts
trade, consumer, price, attitude, willingness to pay, environ- from 1992 to 2021. The results prove that the top five key-
mental concern, information, intention, perceived value, pur- words with the strongest bursts are “perception” (with the
chase, and service quality in the later years (2004–2017) strength of 6.49), “empirical evidence” (5.26), “driver”
(Dangelico & Vocalelli, 2017; Liobikienė et al., 2016; (4.43), “innovation” (4.38), and “preference” (4.00), mean-
Nguyen et al., 2017; Ozaki & Sevastyanova, 2011; Paul ing that they are the specially focused keywords and are
et al., 2016; Peloza & Shang, 2011; Sheth et al., 2011). The likely to be the turning points in the research domain of green
recent hotspots are green products and young consumers, marketing in sustainable consumption. The top five key-
demonstrating that studies in the cluster of organic food in words with the most prolonged bursts are “conservation”
green marketing in sustainable consumption are dynamic (10 years), “power” (8 years), “business” (7 years), “demand”
and comprehensive (Dhir et al., 2021; Sultan et al., 2020). (5 years), and “economy” (4 years), meaning that the scholars
The rest clusters are barriers (including topics such as barri- have long focused them. The latest five keywords among the
ers in management, firms, performance, strategy, supply top 20 are “health,” “preference,” “innovation,” “driver,”
chains, competition, industry, online, and optimization), sus- and “perception,” meaning that they are the latest research
tainable lifestyle (including topics of environmental attitude, frontier of this domain. The top five with the earliest bursts
fair trade, climate change, energy consumption, and green are “business,” “conservation,” “demand” (2007), “power”
consumer), social issues (including social impact, electricity (2009), and “market orientation” (2012). We can find that the
14 SAGE Open

Figure 11. Top 20 keywords with the strongest citation bursts.

keywords with the strongest, the longest, the latest, and the domain, which clarifies the popularity and significance of this
earliest bursts are not the same, proving that the contents of domain, and which depicts the welcomed journals and
everyone’s concern in this research domain are comprehen- research categories in this domain; the results are encourage-
sive and extensive. Such results also provide insights that ment for scholars to continue further research in this domain
scholars can focus on different aspects of green marketing in and are practical guidance when scholars want to publish
sustainable consumption and contribute to academic out- papers. The knowledge correlation demonstrates the interac-
comes in various aspects of this domain in the future. tions among scholars with their institutions and countries,
answering how academic stakeholders interact and cooperate;
Theoretical Summaries the results are valuable suggestions for finding proper col-
laborators in this research domain. The knowledge status quo
Knowledge Framework of the Domain illustrates the current situations of the research domain from
It is necessary to systematically analyze and review previous the journal, reference, and author perspectives. By identifying
studies and construct the knowledge mechanism that contrib- the highly counted terms and clustering knowledge, the
utes to the overall progress and understanding of the research results outline the current research focus and temporal frame-
domain (Li et al., 2017; Zhong et al., 2021). This study ana- works, which is conducive to understanding this domain’s
lyzes the knowledge base, correlation, status quo, and evolu- current research processes and themes. The knowledge evolu-
tion of green marketing in sustainable consumption. It thus tion path depicts the tendency of the domain; the clusters of
constructs the knowledge framework of this domain to com- research categories, time-line maps of keyword clusters, and
prehensively understand this research domain and provide keyword strong bursts exhibit the future hotspots of the cate-
valuable references for future explorations (Figure 12). The gories and aspects and provide helpful guidance for scholars
knowledge base is composed of statistical foundations of the on which aspects can be focused in the future.
Geng and Maimaituerxun 15

Figure 12. Knowledge framework of the domain.

When deeply exploring the knowledge base of the UK; the more active cooperation authors are Achim Spiller,
framework, we may find that the domain is popular with Kannan Govindan, and A. Toppinen. When further looking
increasing focus per year. In detail, journals such as at the knowledge status quo, we may find that the themes of
“Sustainability,” “Journal of Cleaner Production,” this domain vary slightly. From the co-cited journal per-
“Business Strategy and the Environment” are the top jour- spective, the themes mainly fall into operation research and
nals welcoming submissions of this domain with most management science, geography, and medicine; from the
focused categories in environmental sciences, green sus- perspective of the co-cited reference, the themes are mainly
tainable science & technology, and environmental studies. regarding B2B firm, planned behavior, and empirical
When looking at the knowledge correlation, we may find research of green marketing in sustainable consumption;
that the cooperation among institutions, regions, and from the co-cited authors perspective, the themes are
authors is dynamic: we may find that the more active coop- mainly about the emerging market, planned behavior, and
eration institutions are the University of Sheffield, public policy challenge of the research domain. Looking
Bucharest University of Economic Studies, and the deeper at the knowledge evolution, we may have a clearer
University of Southern Denmark; the more active coopera- sight of future trends. Categories of materials science, envi-
tion regions are the USA, the PR China, and England of the ronmental studies, and industrial engineering of this domain
16 SAGE Open

will be more popular, and the domain’s economic growth, Conclusions

perception, and innovation will be the coming hot topics.
This study analyzes the bibliometric evolutions of green
marketing in sustainable consumption with CiteSpace, which
Key Research Directions provides a new perspective to evaluate the research process
of this domain. We can conclude several findings in this
In recent years, the research of green marketing in sustain- study. (1) In the latest decade, the publications have wit-
able consumption has increased, and some new and critical nessed an apparent increase; the publication distributions of
research directions have emerged; research focuses are get- journals and categories prove that research of green market-
ting more diversified. Therefore, it is needed for future stud- ing in sustainable consumption is comprehensive and inter-
ies to pay more attention to the following changing research sectional. (2) For the collaboration network of this research
directions. (1) The research domain will be more integrated domain, though authors seem to be more likely to do research
with multiple disciplines; theories in various non-traditional independently in this field, there are still relatively compli-
categories such as food science, ethics, materials engineer- cated collaboration networks among institutions and strong
ing, and environmental studies will be included in this extensive cross-regional collaborations. (3) For the current
research domain. The alternative topics for future research knowledge situations of this domain, journals publishing
may be the organic food growing and marketing, the ethical related articles, mostly cited references, mostly cited authors
issues in green marketing in sustainable consumption, the cover wide ranges of categories, implying the multidisci-
application of new materials to achieve green marketing in plinary nature of this research domain; besides, the most pro-
sustainable consumption, and the coordination among envi- ductive authors may not be highly cited, which is contradict
ronment, society, economy, and green marketing in sustain- with former results of other studies. (4) For the co-occur-
able consumption. (2) The research topics will be more rence and knowledge evolutions of this domain, “green,”
complex and comprehensive; “customer perception and “consumption,” “sustainability,” and “consumer” are more
behavior” will not be the dominating topic in this research welcomed and valued in this research domain and are at the
domain anymore; the topics will cover different areas in the dominating status in the recent studies; besides. the catego-
future. The alternative emerging hotspots of the domain ries of the domain will keep multidisciplinary; furthermore,
cover the areas of health, technology, society, economy, and the keywords with the strongest, the longest, the latest, and
consumer. Specifically, customers’ health, relevant green the earliest bursts vary, proving that the contents of every-
marketing technology, green marketing innovation, support- one’s concern in this research domain are comprehensive and
ing infrastructures for sustainable consumption, policy mak- extensive. (5) The research of green marketing in sustainable
ing procedures of green marketing in sustainable consumption has significantly increased in recent years, and
consumption, economic growth from green marketing, and some new and critical research directions have emerged;
the sustainable lifestyle of consumers will be the hotspots in research focuses are much more diversified. Therefore, it is
the domain. (3) Studies regarding the theories and method- needed for future studies to pay more attention to the chang-
ologies to solve the problems in this domain will be an ing research directions.
emerging trend. Specifically, empirical research will be grad- There are several innovations of this study. (1) This study
ually more significant in future research, which should be combines green marketing and sustainable consumption and
paid special attention to; in other words, papers discussing comprehensively analyzes the research development path of
the topics mentioned above with new empirical research green marketing in sustainable consumption, covering the
methods are more likely to be published and focused in this deficiencies of former studies that lack comprehensive and
domain. (4) Studies regarding the practice of green market- integrated analysis of this research domain. (2) This study
ing in sustainable consumption will also be an emerging constructs and precisely elaborates the research framework
trend. How theories can be applied to direct effective green of this domain, which is conducive to helping readers and
marketing practice will be more significant; especially, cus- scholars to understand the knowledge structure and evolu-
tomer-oriented approaches will be more critical: alternative tion better comprehensively and dynamically. (3) This study
topics include what barriers are in increasing green market- reveals the research gaps and main focused aspects and pro-
ing in sustainable consumption, how to enhance consumers’ poses vital research directions in the future, which further
perceptions of green marketing in sustainable consumption, enrich the knowledge system and are significant references
how to improve consumers’ preferences to consume sustain- for scholars to explore the research of this domain in the
ably, how to encourage consumers to have sustainable life- future more effectively and efficiently.
styles via green marketing, and how to improve the health Also, there are some limitations of this study. (1) This
status of consumers by green marketing in sustainable con- study selects publications in English only and ignores some
sumption. In general, we suggest that researchers expand papers in other languages. (2) The latest literature during the
knowledge structures and absorb new ideas in different cat- writing period is ignored, though we must admit that the
egories and topics. update of this domain is fast. Therefore, future studies may
Geng and Maimaituerxun 17

select publications in other languages and compare differ- comparison between green and non-green consumers.
ences of the results; besides, the latest publications will be Journal of Business Ethics, 134, 229–247.
selected, and the evolution trends should be further Bastas, A., & Liyanage, K. (2019). Integrated quality and supply
discussed. chain management business diagnostics for organizational
sustainability improvement. Sustainable Production and
Consumption, 17, 11–30.
Author Contributions
Cetin, M. A. (2018). Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve
Conceptualization, Y.G.; methodology, Y.G.; software, Y.G.; vali- and the role of green energy: Emerging and developed markets.
dation, Y.G.; formal analysis, M.M.; investigation, Y.G.; resources, International Journal of Green Energy, 15, 37–44.
Y.G.; data curation, Y.G.; writing—original draft preparation, Chekima, B., Syed Khalid Wafa, S. A. W., Igau, O. A., Chekima,
Y.G.; writing—review and editing, Y.G.; visualization, M.M.; S., & Sondoh, S. L. (2016). Examining green consumerism
supervision, Y.G.; project administration, Y.G.; funding acquisi- motivational drivers: Does premium price and demographics
tion, Y.G. matter to green purchasing? Journal of Cleaner Production,
112, 3436–3450.
Data Availability Statement Chen, C., & Song, M. (2019). Visualizing a field of research: A
methodology of systematic scientometric reviews. PLoS One,
Data are available if requested to the author.
14, e0223994.
Chen, S. (2016). Selling the environment: Green marketing dis-
Declaration of Conflicting Interests course in China’s automobile advertising. Discourse Context
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect & Media, 12, 11–19.
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Chen, S., Law, R., Xu, S., & Zhang, M. (2020). Bibliometric
and visualized analysis of mobile technology in Tourism.
Funding Sustainability, 12, 7975.
Dalmoro, M., Venturini, J. C., & Pereira, B. A. D. (2009). Green
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
Marketing: Integrated social and environmental responsibility
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This
in the marketing environment. RBGN-Revista Brasileira De
research was funded by Shanghai Education Science Project, grant
Gestao De Negocios, 11, 38–52.
number C2-2020097.
Dangelico, R. M., & Vocalelli, D. (2017). “Green Marketing”: An
analysis of definitions, strategy steps, and tools through a sys-
ORCID iD tematic review of the literature. Journal of Cleaner Production,
165, 1263–1279.
Yuqing Geng https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0472-3866
Dhir, A., Sadiq, M., Talwar, S., Sakashita, M., & Kaur, P. (2021).
Why do retail consumers buy green apparel? A knowledge-atti-
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