Global Trends and Prospects of Community Participation in Marine Protected Areas Based on Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Marine protected area (MPA) is an effective tool for preserving marine organisms and ecosystems under the background of climate change and intense human activities. As a helpful management approach in MPAs, community participation has received substantial attention from researchers worldwide. To identify the research status in the field of community participation in MPAs, 391 papers obtained from the Web of Science were reviewed with bibliometric methods and VOSviewer. The results showed that the number of publications had kept growing from 1994 to 2022. The USA having the most number of publications, followed by Australia. Environmental science was identified as the major thematic area. The studies concentrated on community-based marine resources management, the participation mode of communities and participatory planning and monitoring. Besides, we summarized the experience and lessons of community participation to illustrate the role of community involvement in the construction and management of MPAs. Finally, the outlook for future research was presented based on the analysis above. We recommend promoting cross-disciplinary cooperation and combining quantitative and qualitative methods to support this research. Meanwhile, it was critical to study further the specific path of community participation and fully utilize the local knowledge to supplement scientific data. The current study provided an overview of the characteristics of publications, research trends and primary research methods in the study of community participation in MPAs. The results will help to explore the ways to mitigate conflicts between MPAs and communities. We hope that our study could promote their coordinated and sustainable development and contribute to marine conservation and human well-being.