Research trends in environmental psychology: A bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed publications, 2004-2024

Discussions about environmental psychology’s constituent research topics and future directions have persisted over several decades. In this bibliometric analysis we analysed author keywords from 4,313 journal articles, published between 2004 and 2024, from two sources: 1) key environmental psychology journals (Journal of Environmental Psychology, Environment and Behavior, PsyEcology: Bilingual Journal of Environmental Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology: Environmental Psychology, and Global Environmental Psychology) and 2) other journals where authors explicitly provided ‘environmental psychology’ as an article keyword. Using VOSviewer software, we produced maps of a) co-authorship and country collaborations; and b) author keyword co-occurrences to visualise topic clusters overall (2004-2024) and in discrete time periods (2004-2008, 2009-2013, 2014-2018, and 2019-2024). Co-authorship networks tended to relate to specific topics, with limited evidence of collaboration across topics or with authors in the Global South. Keyword co-occurrence mapping revealed eight overarching topic clusters: human–nature relationships; children’s experiences of environments; virtual environments; pro-environmental behaviour; neighbourhood and built environment; place attachment; stress and wellbeing; and climate change. We observed a significant expansion in research on pro-environmental behaviour, sustainability and climate change within environmental psychology, and a decrease over time in the visibility of research on the built environment. We suggest that environmental psychology has the potential to make greater contributions to research on conflict, migration, ageing, the built environment, and considerations of cultural and individual differences in environmental experiences.