Development, hotspots and trend directions of marine ecological compensation in China: A bibliometric-based assessment

Marine ecological compensation plays a critical role in harmonizing marine ecology protection and resource utilization, serving as the key to establishing marine ecological civilization. This study constructs a knowledge framework for China's marine ecological compensation based on current research. Utilizing the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database as the main data source and employing CiteSpace software to visualize knowledge map, it showcases the hotspots and frontiers in the field of China's marine ecological compensation research over the past two decades. In additional, the study innovatively adds international literature on this topic in the Web of Science database for comparative analysis to grasp the new trends in China's marine ecological compensation research. The results show that: China's marine ecological compensation research started later than international research, with fewer publications, and a clear policy-oriented focus in the literature output. High-frequency cited literature reflect the interdisciplinary nature of marine ecological compensation research. The research hotspots in China's marine ecological compensation primarily revolve around damage assessment, standard quantification, and regional practices. In contrast, international research centers more on aspects like "Willingness to pay", "Contingent valuation", and "Blue carbon". Since 2016, the keywords that have emerged with greater intensity in China's marine ecological compensation research include "island tourism", "ecological damage", "legal path", etc. During the precipitation period of China's marine ecological compensation research, diversified compensation standards, pre-compensation methods, island ecological compensation, and performance evaluation have emerged as research focus. During the same period, marine ecosystems with carbon sequestration potential received great attention from international literature.