Two decades of eco-efficiency research: a bibliometric analysis

Sustainability has been a global focus in recent decades. It has been viewed in various forms and measured across many fields. One of the critical assessment tools that measure both environmental sustainability and economics is eco-efficiency. In this paper, the trend of eco-efficiency research over the last two decades (1998–2018) has been evaluated based on 5582 scientific publications on the web of science using bibliometric analysis. The result provides a detailed analysis of the number of papers, authors, journals, institutes, countries, citations, co-citations, bibliographic coupling, and the general eco-efficiency research trend. The analysis shows that keywords such as life cycle analysis and data envelopment analysis alongside other concepts have been used frequently in eco-efficiency research. The eco-efficiency concept and its approaches have been applied across a wide range of sectors. The result shows that besides engineering, and environmental science, the concept is also trending in the business economics sector. The study also reveals an increasing growth trend in its application in industrial and environmental sustainability, recording 576 publications in 2017. Following the analysis, pathways for future research have been suggested. The benefits of eco-efficiency research are significant and show that its application will lead to efficient resource utilization while minimizing environmental impact.