We Know Packaging Harms the Environment — But What Are Researchers Actually Looking At?
The volume of packaging waste generated worldwide every day is staggering. Since COVID-19 accelerated the growth of e-commerce, demand for single-use packaging materials has climbed even faster. So how has the academic community approached this problem, and in what direction are researchers seeking solutions?
This study presents an analysis of 176 journal papers on sustainable packaging in supply chain management, published between 1993 and 2020, using keyword network analysis and topic modeling. (Morashti, An & Jang, 2022)
Background
What individual papers cannot show
Research on sustainable packaging has accumulated steadily over the years, yet systematic attempts to organize this body of work within the context of supply chain management have been rare. Most existing systematic literature reviews (SLRs) relied on qualitative methods, meaning they could tell you which papers exist but not how the ideas within them relate to one another structurally.
The only prior SLR in this specific field reviewed 59 papers published through 2018 using purely qualitative methods. Quantitative approaches such as keyword frequency analysis or network analysis had never been attempted. In other words, individual papers existed without any map of the research landscape to situate them.
To fill this gap, the research team combined text mining with social network analysis (SNA) to develop a quantitative SLR methodology. Rather than reading each paper in isolation, they examined the entire knowledge network that those papers collectively form.
-
PREV Why Doesn’t the Village Next to a Tourist Hotspot Ever Take Off?
-
NEXT No next post.