Bibliometric analysis of technology adoption literature published from 1997 to 2020

Abstract

With the rapid development of emerging technologies, research on technology adoption is valuable for improving the reception efficiency of new technologies. This paper uses bibliometric analysis methods and visualization software to explore the research stages, the hot issues, the limitations of the research and the future fronts. A total of 11,706 documents were collected as the original data using the retrieval formulas. Sorted by the numbers of citations, the top 10% of the documents are extracted as the top-cited documents. First, combining software and bibliometric analysis, we obtain the annual development trends and identify the productive countries/regions, the influential institutions and the high-yielding authors. In addition, we overview the representative authors and their works in the development of technology adoption. Then, we conduct keyword analysis and burstiness analysis to identify the academic hotspots, research fronts and limitations in this field. The results show that increasingly more researches have shifted from theories to applications. Technology adoption has multiple applications in the fields of online shopping, mobile learning, mobile banking, e-learning and health care delivery. Finally, we draw conclusions on the bibliometric findings and forecast the future research trends of technology adoption. In the future, more researches will focus on the impacts of age, gender, culture, and the environment on technology adoption.