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Analysis of environmental taxes publications: a bibliometric and systematic literature review

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Abstract

This study aims to provide a systematic literature review based on bibliometric analysis for scientific articles published between 1999 and 2019 extracted from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science (WOS) database. The current research project provides an overview of scientific publications, influential authors, and research journals. Our analysis reveals that the USA leads the academic research contribution, whereas China has provided the most research publications in recent years. Environmental and Resource Economics, University of London, and Barcena-Ruiz are the most productive journal, academic institution, and author in the field of environmental taxes, respectively. The degree of research contribution among researchers, institutional and national level, has an upward trend in recent years; however, the research contribution at the author level is higher than the institutional and national level. Furthermore, cocitation analysis suggests that research articles in the dataset are closely related. Pigou’s “The economics of welfare” published in 1920, is considered as the basic literature, and the “In defence of degrowth” authored by Giorgis Kallis is the most cited article. Our analysis of abstracts and keywords indicates that climate change, environmental taxes, double dividend, carbon tax, and environmental pollution are the hotspots within academic literature. We suggest that research collaboration between developed and developing nations and further coordination among environmental agencies such as IEA and IPCC will enhance the effectiveness of environmental reforms.

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Data availability

Research data can be obtained from the corresponding author through email.

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Funding

We acknowledge the financial support by the Ministry of Education-China Mobile Joint Laboratory Grant Number: 2020MHL02005.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business School, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Muhammad Farhan Bashir & Benjiang MA

  2. School of Accounting, Hubei University of Economics, Wuhan, China

    Bilal

  3. Department of Accounting, Business School, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China

    Bushra Komal

  4. School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Muhammad Adnan Bashir

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  1. Muhammad Farhan Bashir
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  2. Benjiang MA
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  3. Bilal
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Contributions

Authors’ contributions are the following.

Muhammad Farhan Bashir—writing—review and editing, data curation.

Benjiang MA—supervision, project administration.

Bilal—methodology.

Bushra Komal—resources.

Muhammad Adnan Bashir—investigation, formal analysis.

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Correspondence to Benjiang MA.

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Bashir, M., MA, B., Bilal et al. Analysis of environmental taxes publications: a bibliometric and systematic literature review. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 20700–20716 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12123-x

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