PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2016, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (12): 1459-1472.doi: 10.18306/dlkxjz.2016.12.003

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Progress of environmentally responsible behavior research and its enlightenment to China

Xueting HONG(), Hongmei ZHANG*()   

  1. College of Territorial Resources and Tourism Management, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241003, Anhui, China
  • Online:2016-12-20 Published:2016-12-20
  • Contact: Hongmei ZHANG E-mail:1521011015@ahnu.edu.cn;hongmei_221@qq.com
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41371161, No.41571133

Abstract:

As the concept of sustainability becomes widely adopted, research on environmentally responsible behavior receives broad attention. In order to examine the knowledge base, hotspots, and tend of development of environmentally responsible behavior research, this article analyzes 4675 papers related to environmentally responsible behavior from the Web of Science database between 1990 and 2016 to map knowledge domains of co-citation journals, authors, and papers and co-current key words and burst key words by the aid of CiteSpace—a free Java application for visualizing and analyzing trends and patterns in scientific literature. The results show that: the knowledge bases in the field of responsible environmental behavior include "value-belief-norm theory," "theory of planned behavior," "norm activation model," "model of responsible environmental behavior," "multi-factor integration model," and the "new ecological paradigm." The research mainly focused on environmental concern, social basis of environmental concern, influencing factors of environmentally responsible behavior, measurement, and the construction of theoretical models. The research trends mainly include strategies for coping with global climate change and sustainable development, shifting trend of predictive indices of environmentally responsible behavior, development of factors that influence environmentally responsible behavior, construction of theoretical models of environmentally responsible behavior, and guiding practice through environmental policy development and design. The article concludes by summarizing and providing a glimpse into the future direction of Chinese research on environmentally responsible behavior, including a review of the existing theory, developing theories suitable for China's cultural background, studying in different scientific fields and with different perspectives, studies focusing on situational factors, intervention policy making, studying the subdivisions of environmental behavior and its influencing factors, development of measurements, as well as research methods innovation, so as to lay a foundation for further research on environmentally responsible behavior in China.

Key words: environmentally responsible behavior, CiteSpace, knowledge map, environmental concern, influencing factor