Adaptive water governance research in social sciences journals: a bibliometric analysis

Extreme weather events caused by climate change have frequently been occurring and have a great impact on residents’ lives and economic development around the world. For example, in 2021, floods in Seblitz, Germany killed 180 people, and heavy rain in Zhengzhou caused 380 deaths and an economic loss of 40.9 billion yuan. The prevention and response to frequent water disasters have become a common challenge for governments all over the world. Engineering and technology make up just one aspect of the prevention of water disasters; more important is the lack of governance capacity and mechanisms (Bakker & Morinville, 2013; Zurita et al., 2018). Therefore, adaptive water governance is a key issue of sustainable development and urban development in the contemporary world.

Adaptive water governance is the outcome of the development of water governance as well as the combination of adaptive management and water research (Huitema et al., 2009). People have long been trying to explore a successful/good water governance model. Early water governance focused on engineering and technology (Ingold et al., 2016). In general, technocrats depoliticized the management and engineering process, which is commonly referred to as supply management (Pahl-Wostl, 2017). Water governance decision-making methods during this period were top-down and did not adequately reflect changes in water demand. With the aggravation of the contradiction between the supply and demand of water resources, the ability to solve water shortages by increasing water conservancy projects has been increasingly limited (Woodhouse & Muller, 2017; Li et al., 2020; Wang & Dai, 2021). To address this challenge, integrated water resource management (IWRM) has emerged as a new water resource governance model (Berger et al., 2020). IWRM is rooted in the concept of good governance and calls for the integrated, economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable use of water resources (Smith & Clausen, 2015).

However, despite the widespread global adoption of IWRM, this water governance model remains controversial. For example, Varady et al. (2016) argue that the IWRM is not sufficiently comprehensive as the term only involves the water resource sector while ignoring energy and food, which cannot be separated from water resources. Herrfahrdt-Pähle (2013) questions whether the ‘management’ of IWRM is ‘adaptive’. Due to the frequent occurrence of extreme and sudden floods caused by climate change, the focus of water governance has gradually shifted to adaptive water governance (Godden et al., 2011). The multidimensional and dynamic aspects of adaptive water governance are well suited to managing water problems (Akamani, 2016). Adaptive water governance enables timely action in the face of complex and variable amounts of scientific information and knowledge about large ecosystems and the generation and sustainability of an ideal approach to social development in the face of increased frequency of sudden extreme weather events (Cosens & Williams, 2009). Therefore, adaptive water governance is regarded as the most promising approach to water governance.

Science Citation Index (SCI) journals focus on engineering and technology research, while Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) journals focus on humanities and social sciences including management, law, economics, sociology, and information science. Adaptive water governance is more of a social science research area owing to the emphasis on management and institutions. However, current research on adaptive water governance is fragmented and does not conduct a systematic review of the literature, let alone one that incorporates contemporary bibliometric approaches. Through a visualization, modularization, and quantification method, bibliometric analysis can help us systematically comprehend the evolution and hotspots of scholarly studies on specific subjects. CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and HistCite are the common software of bibliometric analysis. To examine the development and trend of adaptive water governance research through bibliometrics, we used SSCI journals as the source. This study aims to understand how scholars from the social science perspective look at adaptive water governance as well as what the popular topics and trends are in the research on adaptive water governance.

Based on the articles on adaptive water governance published in SSCI journals, this study adopts CiteSpace software and the bibliometrics method to analyze the popular topics, networks, and trends of global adaptive water governance research. The contributions of this study are as follows. First, it systematically reviews the progress of adaptive water governance from the perspective of social science; second, the popular topics and trends identified in this study are helpful for scholars who will conduct further research on adaptive water governance.

The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section illustrates the research method and data. The third, fourth, and fifth sections provide descriptive analyses of results including publications, cooperation networks, popular topics, and trends. The last section concludes the article.

To identify the characteristics and trends of adaptive water governance research systematically and comprehensively in the social sciences, this study adopts the bibliometrics method based on CiteSpace software. The bibliometrics method is used to quantitatively analyze and visualize a specific piece of knowledge and has been widely applied in academic research (Wang et al., 2018; Song et al., 2019; Hu et al., 2021).

The data of this study came from the Web of Science (WoS). WoS is a large comprehensive multi-disciplinary database of journal citations index developed by Thomson Scientific. Based on the powerful information analysis and citation report functions of WoS and the CiteSpace software, this study statistically analyzes adaptive water governance research on the number of articles published in different years and the competitiveness of major countries and institutions and visually presents keyword co-occurrence relationships as well as cooperation between institutions and countries. Finally, this study interprets the research progress of adaptive water governance and analyzes future research trends and potential directions.

In Figure 10, each node represents a keyword, and the larger the node, the higher the frequency of the keyword. In addition, the circle layer represents the frequency of the keyword in each year, and the thickness of the circle layer is proportional to the number of citations in that year. If the outermost circle of the node is purple, the keyword will have great centrality and attract more attention. To some extent, the keyword represents a popular recent research topic. The cluster analysis of the knowledge network based on keywords obtained 10 clusters, a Q-value of 0.3443, and an S-value of 0.7076, indicating that the network clustering results are good. From the perspective of the overall network, the keyword networks interact with each other without omissive clustering, indicating that, although there is a wide range of research on adaptive water governance, the research topics in each sub-field are strongly correlated, and the common knowledge base is relatively clear. Moreover, the smaller the cluster number is, the more complete the cluster topic cover layout is. The 10 clusters are in order of size as follows: ＃0South Africa, ＃1Adaptive governance, ＃2Groundwater, ＃3PCA, ＃4Scenario planning, 5＃APH, ＃6Resource, ＃7Watershed, ＃8Computer experiment, and ＃9Howiesons Poort (Figure 11). These clusters reflect the focus of global literature research in recent years and show the international research hotspots in the field of adaptive water governance. In international studies on adaptive water governance, the keywords with the highest frequency are governance and climate change, and other keywords with high frequency are framework, governance, and impact (Table 4). From the perspective of high centrality, the recent popular topics of international research on adaptive water governance ranked from high to low as governance, climate change, framework, and impact. In addition, changes in the color of the cluster outline reflect the timing of the appearance of the cluster. This is marked in the lower right corner of the CiteSpace diagram from gray to red, representing the appearance time from early to late. Thus, #9Howiesons Poort is the most novel in current research. The specific content of each clustering topic is as follows.

#0(South Africa) emphasizes the impact of climate on adaptive water governance and internal elements. This research focuses on South Africa and discusses climate change, conducts policy analysis on climate change, develops and explores adaptive governance, mitigates the damage from climate change, enhances the ability to adapt and cope with climate variability, and establishes the corresponding thought model.

#1(Adaptive governance) mainly focuses on the response of adaptive governance measures for adaptive water governance. Taking ecosystem services and subsistence fisheries as examples, it discusses the major measures of adaptive governance and the implementation of stakeholder participation. It further analyzes the adaptability of cooperative governance and the participatory approach.

#2(Groundwater) focuses on globally advocated sustainable goals. Taking groundwater as an example, the resource barrier is discussed, and social resilience is analyzed on the premise of resource dependence to achieve sustainable development goals.

#3(PCA) focuses on methods. To be specific, it emphasizes the analysis of regional community natural resource governance using South Australia as an example to explore the adaptive capacity of social learning and discussing environmentally friendly behaviors, threatened communities, new ecosystems, global warming, and additional topics.

#4(Scenario Planning) mainly involves scenario planning, focusing on practical work in the public sector, environmental flows, intermittent rivers, social ecosystems, environmental governance, and so on.

#5(APH) also focuses on methods in addition to the socio-ecological resilience of adaptive water governance, the adaptability of design principles, shared socio-economic approaches, socio-economic scenarios, and social capital topics.

#6(Resource) focuses on the rapidly changing resource profile, taking note of aquatic fisheries and coral loss, social learning, participatory processes, stakeholder analysis, and social network analysis, which are all mentioned to enhance the resilience of ecosystem resources.

#7(Watershed) focuses on watershed issues. Taking the basin as the background, this research discusses the emerging ‘basin diseases,’ analyzing the problems of flood control and disaster reduction as well as location attachment and lake basin governance.

#8(Computer Experiment) mainly includes experimental design and optimization modeling. To optimize the design of adaptive water governance, it involves an adaptive regression spline, the urban airflow model, computer experiments, and control strategies.

#9(Howiesons Poort) focuses on technology development. This research stresses social aggression and pressure conditions suitable for developing technological adaptability. For some researchers, Howiesons Poort still represents an unusually brief technological development in the Mesolithic period that may have been associated with environmental pressures. Thus, many hypotheses suggest that it was an environmental adaptation, while for others, on the contrary, it implies complex cognition by elaborate techniques and symbols.

In a word, international research on adaptive water governance has gradually shifted from the impact of a single factor such as water, soil, atmosphere, or climate change to a multi-factor comprehensive study of natural ecosystems in recent years. In addition, scholars with different academic backgrounds are committed to discussing the same research context from multiple perspectives, reflecting the evolution and development characteristics of popular research topics on adaptive water governance in different development stages.

This study provides a new quantitative and visualizing analysis of adaptive water governance research through the CiteSpace software based on the data of the SSCI core collection. This study explores the popular topics and frontiers in the field of adaptive water governance in recent years, analyzes the evolution of the global knowledge body of adaptive water governance, and provides a reference and basis for further research.

The main conclusions of this study are as follows. First, as a new research field, the attention of scholars on adaptive water governance is increasing yearly based on articles published in the SSCI journals. Second, among the 66 disciplines involved in the study of adaptive water governance, 10 disciplines, including environmental science, environmental research, water resources, ecology, geography, sustainable science, development research, atmospheric science, regional urban planning, and engineering environmental science, have a strong influence. Third, among the 85 countries involved in the study of adaptive water governance, Australia is the leading country with strong collaborative influence, accounting for 29.08% of the global articles, followed by the USA, the UK, and Canada. Fourth, Ecology and Society, followed by Sustainability and Environmental Science Policy, was the most influential of the 164 journals that published articles on adaptive water governance. Fifth, authors of adaptive water governance research have not yet formed close collaborations, while international research institutions on adaptive water governance work closely together, especially the University of Tasmania, Deakin University, Griffith University, James Cook University, the University of Arizona, and Oxford University, which play important roles in global cooperative networks. Cooperation between countries is also strong, especially among Australia, the USA, the UK, India, and Canada, which occupy a central position in the global cooperation network. Sixth, there are 10 clusters in the adaptive water governance research that represent the popular topics of adaptive water governance in recent years. In particular, research on adaptation to climate change, agriculture, and determinants constitutes the forefront topics of adaptive water governance research.

With an increasing number of scholars coming to realize the importance of adaptive water governance, diversified knowledge and cutting-edge hotspots have sprung up around adaptive water governance; research perspectives are gradually expanding, and research systems are constantly improving. However, there are still some shortcomings in the concept, theoretical framework, practice, and policy response of adaptive water governance. First, a universally accepted concept, analysis framework, knowledge system, and paradigm for adaptive water governance have not yet been formed. Second, research on adaptive water governance needs to be more interdisciplinary and comprehensive. Current studies focus on resources, river basins, and other physical entities and lack exploration of the development mechanism and future scenario simulation of adaptive water governance. Although there is a basic understanding of multi-disciplinary interaction, the breadth and depth of multi-disciplinary participation still need to be improved. In the context of the big data era, it would be possible to explore and utilize large-scale and high-precision information-processing methods to dynamically monitor the development of adaptive water governance and deepen the research on the development approach of adaptive water governance with different scales and types. Finally, the response of adaptive water governance is insufficient, and no targeted response measures and policies have been formed thus far. In the future, it will be necessary to combine the changes in governance structure and function in the development process of adaptive water governance, emphasize different response models under multi-agent interactions, and strengthen the research on the regulation mechanism of adaptive water governance.

There are some limitations to this study. At present, it is difficult to investigate the relationship between references and cited literature because of the small correlation density and short time span of the research network. In the future, it will be necessary to enhance the extension of the research field, focus on expanding and reasonably refining the research branches, attract more researchers and institutions, and further form a broader research network and knowledge system. In addition, SCI journals have been excluded in this study, limiting the explanatory power and the persuasiveness of our conclusions. Follow-up research is needed to expand the research data sources to understand the research topics and progress of global adaptive water governance more comprehensively.

All relevant data are included in the paper or its Supplementary Information.

The authors declare there is no conflict.