Economic Resilience to Disasters in 1999–2022: A Bibliometric Literature Review with Future Research Direction Amid the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This literature review examines the current trend of academic papers on economic resilience (ER) as part of disaster risk reduction from 1999 to 2022 using bibliometrics. The purpose is to fill the knowledge gaps and suggest future research direction in this field, especially after the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Scopus database’s search using pertinent keywords produced 309 documents written by 340 academics from 41 countries and issued in 86 digital documents. Using the inclusion and exclusion criteria, further screening resulted in 128 documents. The bibliometric analyses comprised the identification of three major research streams to understand the research evolution, co-citation analysis and bibliometric coupling (clustering), and identification of the knowledge gaps to discover the future orientation of ER studies. The three main findings of this review are as follows. First, the ER field evolved in three stages: emergence (1999–2006), acknowledgment (gaining scholars’ attention, 2006–2014), and rapid growth (2014–2022). Second, ER theories that influence most of the works are those of Rose (2004), Holling (1973), and Mileti (1999), with Rose as the most cited in Natural Hazards, Advances in Spatial Science, and International Journal of Disaster and Risk Reduction. By country, the United States and China are the largest contributors to scholarly publications on ER. Third, it is likely that future research will be centered around economic resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is part of the existing and emerging research streams that also provides potential research direction of ER for disaster risk reduction in the future.