Interweaving Industrial Ecology and Ecological Modernization: A Comparative Bibliometric Analysis

Although industrial activity has brought about rapid economic growth, it also faces the dual challenges of resource constraints and environmental pressure. Industrial ecology (IE) and ecological modernization (EM) are two theories regarding the conceptualization and implementation of sustainable development that emerged from the natural and social sciences, respectively. Over the past three decades, scholars have conducted copious amounts of theoretical and applied research on IE and EM, but comparative studies from an interdisciplinary perspective on the relationship between the two remain relatively rare. On the basis of a bibliometric analysis, this study offers a comprehensive examination of the background, theoretical connotations, and main content of IE and EM, also exploring the role of both theoretical perspectives in the promotion of sustainable industrial development. The findings are fourfold: (1) the research on IE and EM has been increasing year by year, particularly in the past decade; (2) the research is mostly concentrated in developed countries such as the United States and European Union member nations, and contributions from China have increased significantly in recent years; (3) IE has a broader research community than EM and has evolved clearer and more specific research contents and methods; and (4) IE, which analyzes the problems of specific industrial systems, and EM, which constitutes a higher-level institutional policy design, exhibit a trend of cross-fertilization. This study provides a reference for building a more systematic and comprehensive theoretical system of ecological transformation and discusses the future research directions in this field.