Abstract
Psychological distance provides a mechanistic and integrated theoretical framework for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research; however, its research status and developmental trends remain to be clarified. This study used Citespace, Bibexcel, and Netdraw to construct scientific maps and performed co-word analysis, social network analysis, and cluster analysis of data from 1371 published studies on psychological distance that were retrieved from the Web of Science database. The results and conclusions were as follows: (1) The relevant research identified four periods: an infancy period, exploration period, growth period, and outbreak period. (2) Research on psychological distance has been mainly within the fields of psychology, economics, business, social psychology, and management. (3) Chronologically, the relevant research evolved from an individual psychological level to a social developmental level, and then to an individual behavioral level. (4) Clustering analysis of high-frequency keywords identified six research themes: “psychological construction process,” “individual emotions and reactions,” “social cognition and decisions,” “marketing and consumer behavior,” “international trade,” and “environmental protection and social responsibility.” These themes indicate that studies on psychological distance have involved theory generation, theory driving, and theory diffusion. Finally, this study combined the data and literature analysis to construct a model of developmental trends to highlight possible directions for future research.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded as a Major Project of the National Social Science Funding of China, grant number (16ZDA056), the Think Tank of Green Safety Management and Policy Science (2018 “Double First-Class” Initiative Project for Cultural Evolution and Creation of China University of Mining and Technology), grant number (2018WHCC03), the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province, grant number (KYCX19_2145), the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of China University of Ming and Technology, grant number (KYCX19_2145), the National Natural Science Funding of China, grant numbers (71473248, 71673271, 71473247, and 71273258), the Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province, grant number (18GLB015), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, grant number (2018 M640539), the Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province Project, grant number (14JD026), the “13th Five Year” Brand Discipline Construction Funding Project of China University of Mining and Technology, grant number (2017), the Key Construction Bases of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Jiangsu Universities (Safety Management Research Center), China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, CUMT (2019CXNL07).
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SL contributed to the analysis and interpretation of data for the study and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. HC designed the frame of this paper. YF, FC and CH contributed to the acquisition of data for the study. All authors have approved the final article.
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Li, S., Chen, H., Feng, Y. et al. Research Progress and Thematic Evolution of Psychological Distance—A Co-Word Analysis Based on Bibliometric Research. Curr Psychol 41, 1569–1583 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00690-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00690-8