Educational interventions for environmentally oriented life projects: A bibliometric analysis of global trends

Abstract

Abstract The intensification of the climate crisis and the rise of eco-anxiety among young people contrast with the still partial integration of life projects, environmental citizenship and education for sustainable development into education systems. The objective was to describe and quantitatively analyze the evolution of research on educational interventions aimed at developing environmentally oriented life projects, identifying temporal, geographical and thematic patterns, collaboration networks and influential sources. Bibliometric mapping was applied in Scopus using a trilingual search strategy, with a search conducted on November 14, 2025, which retrieved 1071 documents published between 1963 and 2025 in 699 sources, analyzed using Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, Lotka’s Law and Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy RPYS. The results show an annual growth rate of 6.33%, 3478 authors with 3.47 co-authors per article and 16.62% international collaboration, leadership by the United States 304 documents, the United Kingdom 101 and Australia 64, a predominance of social sciences 29.6%, medicine 14.8% and psychology 12.9%, and a concentration in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Youth and Adolescence and Sustainability (Switzerland). The field connects psychological wellbeing, future orientation and sustainability, although it still shows limited attention to climate change and education for sustainable development, and it needs to expand its networks with Global South to design contextualized interventions that strengthen youth agency and environmentally responsible life projects.