A Bibliometric Review of Sustainable Product Design

Pingfei Jiang, Elena Dieckmann, Ji Han and Peter R. N. Childs
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Pingfei Jiang: School of Engineering and the Environment, Kingston University London, London SW15 3DW, UK
Elena Dieckmann: Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2DB, UK
Ji Han: School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK
Peter R. N. Childs: Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2DB, UK

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-16

Abstract: Consideration of sustainability in product development is becoming increasingly important and encompasses many aspects of product design. In this study, a bibliometric review of recent sustainable product design publications using Web of Science and VOSViewer is carried out. The review indicates that the majority of publications concerning sustainable product design is oriented towards environmental science-led subject areas and production-led journals. Analysis of author keyword co-occurrences reveals that circular economy, life cycle assessment, sustainable management, and optimization are the most popular topics in sustainable product design research. The analysis also reveals that the researchers fail to link sustainability research to activities in product design, which leads to the lack of access to relevant research that can make products more sustainable. Building on the findings, the authors propose four future research directions that aim to guide researchers to better correlate sustainability with product design, namely: sustainability interpretation, integration, assessment and validation, and improvement.

Keywords: sustainability; product; design; literature; review; environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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