Abstract
PurposeThis paper aims to review the literature on carbon trading from the perspective of evolution, finds out the evolution path of these literatures and gives out the future research hotspots in this field.Design/methodology/approachUses visualization tools (CiteSpace and HistCite) to systematically categorize the literature on carbon-trading schemes in the Web of Science core collection from 1998 to 2018, comprehensively analyzes carbon-trading schemes from four dimensions, namely, discipline evolution, keyword evolution, citation cluster evolution and citation path evolution.FindingsResearch on carbon-trading schemes has a specific development and evolution path along four dimensions, namely, in the discipline dimension, the largest change lies in the mathematics pointed to by at least four different disciplines; the keyword evolution dimension shows a gradual deepening emphasis on coordinated development; citation clusters identify three major clusters – carbon prices, China’s carbon trading, carbon market and supply chain; and citation paths identify three major evolutionary paths, the most important of which shows that “What affects carbon price?” has changed to “What is the impact of carbon prices?”Originality/valueReveals the evolution path of carbon trading research studies and proposes four possible development directions for carbon-trading scheme research, which is helpful for future carbon trading-related research and serves as a reference for the promotion of and improvements in carbon-trading schemes.
Highlights
Increasing climate change is likely to hinder the steady and rapid development of the world economy
The novelty of this article can be displayed in the following four aspects: this paper provided a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic process of the development and evolution of carbon-trading schemes; this paper has mapped the first dual-map overlay figure of the carbon trading literature and demonstrated it by examples; for the first time, in strict accordance with the development of the timeline, this paper made a detailed and systematic analysis of keywords in a certain field, to describe the development of the whole field; this paper summarizes the evolution of research on carbon trading along four evolutionary dimensions, given and explained the Spiraling evolution of research on carbon-trading schemes
3.1 Discipline evolution In Figure 3, the left side is the distribution of the citing journals, which represents the main categories of the carbon trading-related literature, and the right side is the distribution of the cited journals, which represents what categories are mainly cited in the carbon-trading literature
Summary
Increasing climate change is likely to hinder the steady and rapid development of the world economy. The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that extreme weather on the planet has increased since the 1950s, including heavy rainfall, heat waves, floods and droughts. The report predicts that the intensity and density of heavy rainfall will increase globally in the future, while some regions will experience more severe and frequent droughts and that the frequency of tropical storms in Categories 4 and 5 will increase (IPCC, 2014). Greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide, are the main cause of climate change. One of the key aspects of climate change governance is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. National economic growth depends to a varying degree on fossil-fuel energy, which generates a large amount of carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing emissions means that fossil energy consumption must be
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