Exploring Current Status and Evolutionary Trends on the Paid Use of State-Owned Forest Resources in China: A Bibliometric Perspective

Abstract

State-owned forest resources occupy an important position in China, and the development of their paid use will help to improve the economic benefits of these resources. For this study, 451 journal documents involving the paid use of state-owned forest resources in the CNKI database of China from 2008 to 2021 were selected as samples. Combining qualitative reviews with quantitative analysis, statistical analysis software was used as an analytical tool. The knowledge maps can be visualized by cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling (MDS), and co-occurrence network analysis. The change laws of this research in the time dimension were obtained using developing trend analysis. The results are as follows: 1. The number of research documents on the paid use of state-owned forest resources is increasing. 2. The core authors account for 29.27%; the research impact is relatively scattered. 3. Research institutions are primarily colleges and universities. 4. The support of provincially funded projects accounts for the highest proportion. 5. There is a relatively stable number of journals in this research field. Forestry Economy, Green Science and Technology and China Forestry Economy are the top three journals in terms of citation impact. 6. The existing research topics mainly focus on the development status of paid use, forest tourism and forest health, and the under-forestry economy (under-forestry planting, breeding, and product processing). 7. The intermediary centralities of state-owned forest farms and under-forestry economy are the highest, followed by forest tourism and forest experience, etc. With time and the promulgation of policies, the research focus in this field has gradually shifted from forest assets and forestry economics to ecotourism and forest health, and research on forest carbon sequestration is a technical branch worthy of attention in the future.