Abstract

     This paper aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of green supply chain management in platform economy (GSCM-PE) literature. Based on the bibliometric approach, a descriptive analysis is engaged in the literature published from 2003 to 2020 in Web of Science. There are 1404 publications in this field of GSCM-PE. The number of publications has increased steadily since 2013. China is an essential contributor to this field, with the largest number of publications (356), followed by the USA (175) and England (116). However, China’s total citation is 0.5 times that of the USA, which indicates that China needs further strengthened in quality. In addition, the cooperation between European and American countries is relatively active. Six clusters are identified from co-word network, and their main conclusions are as follows: (i) based on Internet technology, the application of SCM in business is the hottest topic and (ii) network risk and security requires further exploration.

Introduction

     Supply chain management (SCM) is a comprehensive and effective management method from purchasing to meeting the end customer of the supply chain, which aims to optimise the operation with minimum cost. With people gradually raising the awareness of environmental protection, SCM has become environmentally proactive in recent years, and then the role of the supply chain in promoting recycling, reuse, and resource reduction has increased (Paulraj 2011). Therefore, the sustainable characteristic in supply chain management has been interested in scholars all over the world (Mariadoss et al. 2016; Mardani et al. 2020; Lee et al. 2020). Within this status quo, the SCM has been recently connected with the platform economy, which has an important carrier of supply chain management innovation (Brettel et al. 2014). The platform economy is a new economic system based on digital technology, which has gained momentum as the core organisational form of informational transformation. In the recent two decades, the platform economy has been highly applied in various industries, such as commercial transactions, financial intermediation and ride sharing (You 2020). Behemoth digital platforms economy such as Tmall.com and JD.com has a continuously ignited capital market with the method of SCM, enterprise value and so on.

Conclusion and discussion

     Green supply chain management has become the most concerned issue all over the world. With the practice of platform economy in some specific field, the research of combining platform economy and green supply chain management is a novel emerging area in recent years, which pays attention to interested researchers. In the paper, a total of 1404 papers about green SCM in the platform are collected in Web of Science, and the bibliometric analysis and network analysis are carried out by R and VOSviewers, respectively.

     This research shows that, in terms of the number of publications, the study level of the application of supply chain management in the platform economy is constantly improving. Moreover, since 2003, the total citations has increased significantly. The author analysis shows that Zhong is the most influential author in this field on the basis of the DF value. Besides, China is an essential contributor to the literature of supply chain management in the platform economy, with the largest number of publications (356), followed by the USA (175) and England (116). However, China’s total citation is 0.5 times that of the USA, which indicates that the influence of China in this field may have room for further development.