Research Status, Hotspots, and Evolution Trend of Decision-Making in Marine Management Using VOSviewer and CiteSpace

Abstract

Clarifying the research status, hotspots, and evolution trend of the field of research on decision-making in marine management has certain reference significance for the scholars and decision makers in the field of decision-making in marine management at the theoretical and practical levels. In view of this, this study used 443 pieces of literature retrieved from the Web of Science from 2002 to 2021 as the data source. It adopted the methods of statistical analysis and bibliometric analysis to conduct knowledge mapping visualization analysis in the field of research on decision-making in marine management. The results show that ①there is a high correlation between the level of economic development among countries/regions and the number of publications, and the geographical distribution is closely related to the intensity of research cooperation; ②the research organizations show the characteristics of the diversified distribution. Moreover, although there is no noticeable difference in scientific research output among research organizations, influential research organizations such as NOAA, The Nature Conservancy, and so forth have emerged; ③the author groups as a whole do not show a high cooperation intensity, but there are also scholars with high cooperation intensity within the internal group and other research groups; ④the research hotspots distribution in the field of decision-making in marine management is relatively extensive and belongs to a multidimensional and multiperspective systematic research. Furthermore, the research focuses on subdivision research hotspots mainly involving ecosystem services, knowledge exchange, decision analysis, multicriteria decision, decision support, fisheries management, specific mathematical models and theories, etc; ⑤from the perspective of the evolution trend, it can also be found that different clusters show the evolution trend of overlapping common features and individual features.