A Bibliometric Analysis of Neighborhood Sense of Community

Abstract

The literature on neighborhood sense of community (NSOC) has undergone a period of rapid growth in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to explore the current state of knowledge on NSOC by mapping the knowledge domain and identifying the development trends of this field. A total of 1214 articles that were obtained from the Web of Science core collection between the years 1986 and 2022 served as the data sample, and Citespace was used as the tool for bibliometric analysis and visualization for this study. The results indicated: (1) NSOC research continued to attract the attention of scholars in recent years; (2) NSOC research covered a wide range of subject categories, including urban studies, public health, environmental studies, social work, and urban planning; (3) the Journal of Community Psychology appears to be among the most influential journals, with the greatest infiltration in NSOC research; (4) the collaboration networks of authors and institutions need to be strengthened, and the USA is the country that had the most publications and the strongest influence; (5) the knowledge framework was mainly based around 10 clusters, including place attachment; social life; urban form; community organization; exploring adolescents’ sense; psychological sense; cultural capital; Perth, Western Australia; mental well-being; and neighborhood planning. The scope of existing NSOC research covers a wide range of subject areas, including the concepts of NSOC, the measurement scales of NSOC, the impact of the neighborhood built environment on NSOC, the meditating role of NSOC between the built environment and residents’ mental health and subjective well-being, and the relationship between NSOC and other social factors. NSOC research in rural areas, NSOC research of immigration populations, NSOC research in the context of smart communities and cites, and the relationship between NSOC and health will be the focuses in future studies.

1. Introduction

The definition of the psychological sense of community is commonly understood to explain how people consider their belonging to the related community. This usually involves four fundamental elements consisting of membership, influence, integration, and fulfillment of needs and shared emotional connection [1]. The sense of community is a focused topic in the field of social and community psychology, and it has been discussed in a variety of contexts, including the workplace [2,3], virtual space [4], the neighborhood [5,6,7], and so on. Neighborhood sense of community was not initially frequently discussed, as scholars argued that community has been gradually becoming a place-less concept in the process of urbanization and industrialization. In addition, the traditional neighborhood community has lost the significance it once had in the strengthening of social connections [8]. The absence of social bonds and social control may result in neighborhood disorder, such as crime, noise, drugs, and a poor social and economic environment [9]. Because a sense of community is thought to be positively related to social cohesion, social capital, and collective efficacy in neighborhoods [10,11], the rising notion in the 1980s that cohesive neighborhoods might contribute to social and economic development encouraged scholars to recognize the significance of neighborhood sense of community (NSOC) [12].

Glynn [5] was the first person to introduce the concept of “psychological sense of community” into neighborhood studies, in 1986. Cohrun [13] then redefined the four elements of sense of community in the neighborhood context:

(1) Membership: the entitlement and feeling of being a part of a neighborhood.

(2) Influence: residents need to be responsible for and benefit from community development.

(3) Integration and fulfillment of needs: the happiness and life satisfaction of residents obtained from neighborhoods.

(4) Shared emotional connection: social interaction between neighborhood residents.

The development of measurement scales for NSOC provided tools for research. Although numerous NSOC scales have been developed, the Sense of Community Index (SCI) and the Brief Sense of Community Scale (BSCS) are the two scales that are most frequently used [14,15]. Douglas [16] reviewed all the existing NSOC scales in previous studies and developed a new NSOC scale with 11 items, which is an improvement on the previous scales.

One important topic of NSOC research is the relationship between the built environment and NSOC. As Sarason [17] indicates, the neighborhood, as well as the surrounding social environments, are the most productive factors in creating people’s sense of community. Cohrun [13] goes further to point out that planners can help build residents’ sense of community through the implementation of physical planning initiatives. New urbanists make enhancing the sense of community one of the main goals of neighborhood planning. Further, they claim that the manner in which streets divide and link a neighborhood may result in different movement and interaction activities of the residents, which in turn affects their sense of community [7,18]. Many studies have supported this claim and found that pedestrian environments and sense of community are positively related [19,20]. In the same way, some researchers have validated the correlation between certain neighborhood physical characteristics and NSOC as being positive, such as public space [21,22,23], neighborhood accessibility [24], density [18], green infrastructure [25], housing type [26], sanitation [27], and shopping convenience [21,27].

The impact of NSOC on residents’ other types of mental health and subjective well-being is another important topic [26,28,29]. For example, Walton [29] indicates that the influence dimension of NSOC can prevent residents from feeling isolated and disregarded; whilst Zhang, Loo, and Wang [28] point out that NSOC has a strong influence on life satisfaction. Within this topic, minors and the elderly are the two most investigated population groups because these two groups are more likely to experience loneliness, depression, and other mental issues; an improvement of their NSOC is helpful in dealing with these problems [30,31,32].

As discussed above, a strong NSOC can facilitate positive impacts on the interactions between residents and their neighborhoods, and thus also foster sustainable development of neighborhoods [33]. However, although numerous NSOC studies have been conducted in recent years, there is currently no study that maps the knowledge structure whilst also pointing out the research trends in this field. To fill this gap, a comprehensive literature review on neighborhood sense of community is needed. Compared to the traditional systematic literature review, opportunities for investigation using data analytics and text mining functionalities supplied by software tools is a new method that has gained popularity recently, as it can save energy and time when facing a large amount of literature [34].

This study focuses on analyzing the existing literature on neighborhood sense of community by using Citespace, which is one of the most popular software tools for scientific knowledge mapping and bibliometric analysis. Scientific knowledge mapping presents each aspect of the knowledge domain in the form of images to visualize the evolution of scientific knowledge as well as the structural connections that are associated with this process. Bibliometric analysis is helpful for researchers to identify the research directions and frontier knowledge of the academic subject, and to investigate the knowledge that should be enhanced [35]. Thus, using Citespace enables the researchers to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the knowledge structure and the trends of neighborhood sense of community research, as well as identifying the intellectual base [34].

The research materials and methods are described in the section that follows. Section 3 contains descriptions and discussions of the results associated with various bibliometrics analyses, including co-citation, co-occurrence, and clustering analyses. Section 4 draws conclusions on the results and points out the further development trends of NSOC research.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Collection

The literature data source for this study was taken from the Web of Science Core Col-lection database, which was launched in 1997 [36,37]. The data were collected in January 2023, and the search rules were as follows.

TS = “Neighborhood sense of community”

Publication Date = 1 January 1986 to 31 December 2022

Indexes = SCI-E, SSCI, AHCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, BKCI-S, BKCI-SSH, ESCI

The search strategy above retrieved hits for 1899 records. After limiting the publishing language to English and the document type to article, proceeding paper, review article, and early access, 1759 records were left. After manually checking the titles and abstracts of all the publications, a total of 538 publications that were irrelevant to NSOC, such as those on ethnic and immigration-related senses of community without neighborhood significances, were removed. Additionally, 7 duplicated publications were removed by using the “Remove Duplicates” function in Citespace 6.1.R6. As a result, a total of 1214 publications were selected for further analysis.

2.2. Citespace and the Settings

Citespace is popular software that was developed based on the Java framework to analyze bibliometric networks in a visualized way [38]. Researchers usually use it to write literature reviews from a quantitative point of view because it has the ability to process enormous volumes of literature information quickly and objectively [35]. The results of the analysis are typically presented in the form of a visual image, consisting of nodes and lines. The size of nodes shows the citation frequency of articles, authors, institutions, or countries, the lines show the connections between different nodes, and the strength of the connections is represented by the thickness of the lines. The citation frequency is a useful indicator, since it reveals how much attention a publication has received from researchers and how widely it has been read. Additionally, three metrics are usually used to evaluate the knowledge map. The term “centrality” refers to the ratio of the shortest path between two nodes going through a given node to the shortest path between two nodes in the network; it is used to measure “how likely it is that an arbitrary shortest path in the network will go through the node”. If the value of centrality is over 0.1, it means that the given node is important in the network. The term “Modularity Q” reflects the modularity degree, which ranges from 0 to 1, and when the value of the Modularity Q is over 0.3, the network is thought to be significant. The silhouette is the key measure of the homogeneity of networks; when the value of the silhouette is over 0.5, the result clustering is thought to be reasonable [39].

3. Results

3.1. Overview of NSOC Research

3.1.1. Annual Publications

The number of articles published annually on a specific study topic can represent the level of conceptual growth and the focus of attention in that field, and is therefore a significant indicator of its progress and evolution. Figure 1 illustrates the number of publications for each year from 1986 to 2022; a total of 1214 publications were retrieved. From 1986 to 2015, although the number of publications was small, the research on NSOC has experienced a fluctuating pattern of growth. From 2015 to 2020, the number of publications increased significantly, indicating growing interest in the relationship between the built environment and people’s mental well-being, with a peak of 128 outputs in 2020. The number of publications slightly decreased to 92 in 2022; this is probably because the COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift in research priorities towards studying the impacts of the pandemic on communities, health, and society in general. This could have resulted in fewer publications on neighborhood sense of community, as researchers may have focused their efforts elsewhere. Overall, NSOC research has been increasing, and scholars have paid more attention to NSOC in recent years.

3.1.2. Subject Categories

Because NSOC is an interdisciplinary concept, studies on NSOC can be divided into many different subject categories. This study employed a co-occurrence analysis to determine which subjects were present at each stage of the research field’s evolution. We also summarized the NSOC-related subject categories, and arranged them from most to least occurrence frequency. Figure 2 presents the high-frequency co-occurrence subject categories related to the NSOC study.

Table 1. Top 10 most co-occurring subject categories with their centrality.

Rank	Subject Category	Frequency	Centrality
1	Urban studies	266	0.25
2	Public, environmental & occupational health	235	0.21
3	Environmental studies	235	0.16
4	Psychology, multidisciplinary	163	0.04
5	Social work	128	0.02
6	Regional & urban planning	124	0.15
7	Geography	110	0.11
8	Sociology	87	0.15
9	Environmental science	74	0.04
10	Social sciences, interdisciplinary	65	0.22

presents the top 10 most frequently co-occurring subject categories with their centrality. As seen in Figure 2 and Table 1, “Urban studies” was the largest node in the categories network, indicating that this subject category had the highest academic concentration of studies, with 266 citations. “Public, environmental & occupational health” (235) and “Environmental studies” (291) ranked second and third, respectively. This highlighted the feature that scholars’ interests in NSOC research are mostly concerned with health, environmental, and urban issues. Additionally, “Urban studies” was also the subject category with the highest centrality. Thus, this category was considered to play an important role in bridging other subject categories. The centrality of “Public, environmental & occupational health” and “Environmental studies” followed that of “Urban studies”, and these two categories were also important in the network.

The term “bursting subject categories” refers to subject categories that have undergone high-frequency changes within a certain period of time, and this can help researchers know about what subject categories are currently under study. Figure 3 presents four bursting subject categories: “Social work” and “Psychology, multidisciplinary” are the earliest subjects in NSOC research. The former appeared first in 1994 and most recently in 2002, whereas the latter appeared from 1996 to 2011; “Public, environmental & occupational health” has shown the shortest duration with only one year; “Green & sustainable science & technology” was the most significant subject category recently.

3.1.3. Cited Journals

Influential journals in the NSOC field between 1986 and 2022 are presented in this section.

Table 2. Top 10 journals by number of publications.

Rank	Journal	Publications	Frequency	Centrality	IF 2021
1	Journal of Community Psychology	61	424	0.02	2.297
2	Cities	32	179	0.02	6.077
3	Environment and Behavior	29	379	0.09	6.548
4	American Journal of Community Psychology	26	435	0.04	4.019
5	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health	26	103	0.00	4.477
6	Journal of Environmental Psychology	26	413	0.05	7.649
7	Social Science & Medicine	24	380	0.03	5.379
8	Sustainability	23	74	0.01	3.389
9	Health & Place	21	304	0.05	4.931
10	Social Indicators Research	19	190	0.03	2.935

shows the 10 most popular journals for NSOC research based on the number of publications. These 10 journals represent 287 publications, making up 23.6% of all the NSOC-related publications from 1986 to 2022. The top three journals with the most publications were the Journal of Community Psychology, Cities, and Environment and Behavior. According to Table 2, the journal with the highest citation count (435) was the American Journal of Community Psychology, followed by the Journal of Community Psychology and the Journal of Environmental Psychology, with 424 and 413 citations, respectively. The impact factor is another important indicator of a journal’s overall quality, as it quantifies the journal’s scholarly significance in its own study field. The Journal of Environmental Psychology, Environment and Behavior, and Cities had the highest impact factors, at 7.649, 6.548, and 6.077, respectively. As a result, although the Journal of Community Psychology did not have the highest impact factors, NSOC scholars were more likely to publish their articles in it. This is probably due to the fact that the articles published in the Journal of Community Psychology were more specifically linked to the sense of community or NSOC, whereas the Journal of Environmental Psychology (if = 7.649) included a wider range of studies.

3.2. Research Collaboration

3.2.1. Key Authors

The author collaboration network map in Figure 4 identifies influential authors in the research field, as well as the cooperative relationships between authors.

Table 3. Top 10 authors by numbers of publications.

Rank	Author	Publications	Frequency	Centrality
1	Wood, Lisa	10	6	0.00
2	Giles-Corti, Billie	10	8	0.00
3	Perkins, Douglas D.	9	2	0.00
4	Lardier, David	7	6	0.00
5	Garcia-Reid, Pauline	6	3	0.00
6	Gatti, Flora	6	4	0.00
7	Hernandez, Bernardo	6	1	0.00
8	Hipp, John R.	6	4	0.00
9	Peterson, N. Andrew	6	1	0.00
10	Ohmer, Mary L.	5	1	0.00

shows the top 10 authors who had the most publications. Among the 10 authors, Lisa Wood, Billie Giles-Corti, and Douglas D. Perkins ranked in the top three, having published more articles than others. However, as no author in this network has a centrality value greater than 0.1, there was no core author in this network. Lisa Wood, Billie Giles-Corti, and David Lardier, who had more publications and citations than others, might have a greater influence than others in the NSOC field.

3.2.2. Institution

It is possible to have a better understanding of the degree of academic support and recognition of the research area by conducting an analysis of the institutional collaboration network (Figure 5). As can be seen in

Table 4. Top 10 journals by numbers of publications.

Rank	Institution	Location	Publications	Frequency	Centrality
1	University of Michigan	Ann Arbor, MI, USA	25	14	0.00
2	University of Western Australia	Perth, Australia	24	10	0.01
3	The Chinese University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong, China	23	11	0.00
4	Vanderbilt University	Nashville, TN, USA	20	9	0.01
5	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA	19	13	0.00
6	University of Queensland	Brisbane, Australia	19	10	0.00
7	The University of Hong Kong	Hong Kong, China	18	11	0.01
8	The University of British Columbia	Vancouver, BC, Canada	17	8	0.00
9	University of Toronto	Toronto, ON, Canada	17	4	0.00
10	The University of Melbourne	Melbourne, Australia	16	7	0.00

, the top three institutions with the most publications were the University of Michigan, the University of Western Australia, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The top three institutions with the highest citation frequency were the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and The University of Hong Kong. However, none of the institutions had a centrality greater than 0.1, meaning there were no clearly identifiable core institutions in NSOC research.

3.2.3. Country

The analysis of the collaboration network across countries in NSOC research indicates the focus and value of these countries in the research area (

Table 5. Top 10 countries by numbers of publications.

Rank	Country	Publications	Frequency	Centrality
1	USA	409	445	0.59
2	China	96	94	0.04
3	Canada	92	106	0.12
4	UK	90	129	0.40
5	Australia	86	98	0.20
6	Italy	43	47	0.04
7	Netherlands	32	46	0.13
8	Israel	26	27	0.00
9	Spain	26	38	0.12
10	Japan	21	22	0.01

). The number of publications, the citation frequency, and the centrality are important indicators that can reflect the academic influence and research strength of each country. As seen in Table 5, scholars in the USA published the most articles (n = 409), scholars in China published 96 articles, ranking second, and scholars in Canada published 92 articles, ranking third. In general, research on NSOC has received greater attention from North American scholars than from their international counterparts. Publications from the USA, the UK, and Canada had the highest citation frequencies, showing that they had significant academic influence in this field. Additionally, the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Spain all had centralities above 0.1, indicating that these countries have made greater contributions to international collaboration than other countries.

3.3. Intellectual Base

3.3.1. Reference Clustering Analysis

The reference co-citation network reveals the representative literature. The modularity Q of the synthesized network was 0.9089, which means the cluster result was significant. Additionally, the mean silhouette value was 0.9347, which means the cluster groups had high homogeneity and the result clustering was reasonable. As seen in Figure 6, a total of 21 clusters was constructed, and they were labeled by titles.

Table 6. Top 10 co-citation clusters by size.

Cluster ID	Size	Silhouette	Mean Cited Year	Label (LLR)
0	76	0.967	2009	Place attachment
1	63	0.904	2012	Social life
2	62	0.966	2016	Urban form
3	60	0.997	1996	Community organization
4	50	0.977	1991	Exploring adolescents’ sense
5	48	0.973	2004	Psychological sense
6	48	0.969	2004	Cultural capital
7	47	0.959	2007	Perth Western Australia
8	47	0.897	2018	Mental wellbeing
9	44	0.962	2014	Neighborhood planning

shows the 10 key clusters and their details.

Cluster #0 was the largest cluster, which contained members with a silhouette value of 0.959. It was labeled “place attachment”, and the major citing article was “Place attachment: how far have we come in the last 40 years?” [40]. Further significant topics were concepts of place attachment [41], the measurement of place attachment [42], and the role of place attachment in shaping residents’ social interaction behaviors [43]. Cluster #1 was the second largest cluster, containing 63 members with a silhouette value of 0.904. It was labeled “social life”, and the major citing article was “Built form and community building in residential neighbourhoods: a case study of physical distance in Subiaco, Western Australia” [44]. This cluster mainly focused on relationships between NSOC and the built environment in urban areas, such as public spaces [21] and walkable environments [20]. Cluster #2 was the third largest cluster, with 62 members and a silhouette value of 0.966. It was labeled “urban form”, and the major citing article was “Do gentrifying neighbourhoods have less community? evidence from Philadelphia” [45]. This cluster mainly focused on the influence of urban form on NSOC. Cluster #3, “community organization”, was the fourth largest cluster, with 60 members and a silhouette value of 0.997. The major citing article was “A review of the sense of community index: Current uses, factor structure, reliability, and further development” [46]. This cluster was concerned with the relationship between NSOC and residents’ mental health and community participation, which can lead to social cohesion [47]. Cluster #4 was the fifth largest cluster, with 50 members and a silhouette value of 0.977. It was labeled “exploring adolescents’ sense”, and the major citing article was “Exploring adolescents’ sense of community and its relationship to loneliness” [48]. This cluster mainly focused on enhancing adolescents’ sense of community by the provision of sufficient social supports. Cluster #5 was the sixth largest cluster, with 48 members and a silhouette value of 0.973. It was labeled “psychological sense”, with the major citing article being “Psychological sense of community and its relevance to well-being and everyday life in Australia” [49]. This cluster mainly focused on the association between NSOC and the quality of life of residents and their life satisfaction [50]. Cluster #6 was the seventh largest cluster, which contained 48 members, with a silhouette value of 0.969. It was labeled “cultural capital”, and the major citing article was “Ways to make people active: the role of place attachment, cultural capital, and neighborhood ties” [43]. This cluster focused on relationship between NSOC and cultural (social) capital, and their roles in protecting public safety [51,52]. Cluster #7 was the eighth largest cluster, containing 47 members and with a silhouette value of 0.959. It was labeled “Perth Western Australia”, and the major citing article was “Quality or quantity? Exploring the relationship between public open space attributes and mental health in Perth, Western Australia” [53]. As the name suggests, NSOC studies in this cluster were conducted in the context of Western Australia, which reflects scholars’ interests in this region. Cluster #8 was the ninth largest cluster, which contained 47 members, with a silhouette value of 0.897. It was labeled “mental wellbeing”, and the major citing article was “Pathways between neighbourhood walkability and mental wellbeing: a case from Hankow, China” [54]. This cluster focused on the mediating role of NSOC between the built environment and mental well-being, and other social factors [55]. Cluster #9 was the tenth largest cluster, which contained 44 members with a silhouette value of 0.962. It was labeled “neighborhood planning”, and the major citing article was “Neighbourhood planning and the impact of place identity on housing development in England” [56]. This cluster focused on using neighborhood planning strategies to enhance residents’ NSOC [57].

3.3.2. Landmark Reference

Co-citation analysis of reference makes it relatively simple to locate seminal works from the significant literature in NSOC research.

Table 7. Top 10 co-citation references by size.

Rank	Author	Title	Source	Frequency	Year	Centrality	Refs.
1	Wood et al.	Sense of community and its relationship with walking and neighborhood design	Social Science & Medicine	18	2010	0.37	[58]
2	Francis et al.	Creating sense of community: The role of public space	Journal of Environmental Psychology	15	2012	0.34	[21]
3	Wilson W.J.	The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy	The Truly Disadvantaged:The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy	15	2012	0.23	[59]
4	French et al.	Sense of community and its association with the neighborhood built environment	Environmental andBehavior	14	2014	0.14	[7]
5	Anton and Lawrence	Home is where the heart is: The effect of place of residence on place attachment and community participation	Journal of Environmental Psychology	11	2014	0.21	[60]
6	Sampson et al.	Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy	Science	11	1997	0.21	[47]
7	Whyte, W.H	The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces	TheSocial LifeofSmall Urban Spaces	10	2015	0.01	[61]
8	Pretty et al.	Exploring adolescents’ sense of community and its relationship to loneliness	Journal of CommunityPsychology	9	1994	0.11	[48]
9	Peterson and Paul	Validation of a brief sense of community scale: Confirmation of the principal theory of sense of community	Journal of CommunityPsychology	9	2008	0.10	[62]
10	Scannell and Gifford	Defining place attachment: A tripartite organizing framework	Journal of Environmental Psychology	9	2010	0.01	[41]

presents the 10 most-cited references in the field of NSOC, which were not the most-cited papers from the Web of Science, but from the selected 1214 papers in this study.

Among the 10 most cited papers, 5 are related to the built environment, 2 are related to public safety, 2 are related to the concept and scale of development, and 1 refers to mental health. With a total of 18 citations, it is not surprising that Wood, Frank and Giles-Corti wrote the paper that received the most attention. This paper investigates the association between NSOC and walkable neighborhood design, and points out that the type or purpose of walking can influence NSOC. Francis, Giles-Corti, Wood and Knuiman [21] ranked second with a total of 15 citations. This paper explores four public open spaces and residents’ sense of community in Western Australia, and the results showed that the higher the quality of public space, the higher the level of NSOC. Wilson [59] ranked third with a total of 15 citations. This book reveals the decay of inner-city underclass neighborhoods in the USA between the 1970s and 1980s, and argues that NSOC can help to build a cohesive neighborhood. French, Wood, Foster, Giles-Corti, Frank and Learnihan [7] ranked fourth with a total of 14 citations. This paper argues that sense of community was corelated positively with residents’ perceptions of neighborhood quality, but negatively with residential density. Anton and Lawrence [60] ranked fifth, with a total of 11 citations. This paper indicates that the place attachment of rural residents was higher than that of urban residents, unless they lived in disaster-prone areas, such as rural and urban fringes. Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls [47] ranked sixth with a total of 11 citations. This paper highlights the importance of collective efficacy in creating a safe neighborhood. Whyte [61] ranked seventh with a total of 10 citations. This book identifies the significance of small urban spaces in creating liveable neighborhoods or communities. Pretty, Andrewes and Collett [48] ranked eighth with a total of 9 citations. This paper investigates adolescents’ sense of community in both neighborhood and school contexts, and suggests that the correlation between a lack of sense of community and feelings of isolation links to the importance of the circumstances in which teenagers are raised. Peterson and Paul [62] ranked ninth with a total of 9 citations. This paper develops and validates a Brief Sense of Community Scale (BSCS) based on the four elements of sense of community, which has been widely used in NSOC research. Scannell and Gifford [41] ranked tenth, with a total of 9 citations. This paper reviews multiple definitions of place attachment and places them into a “person–process–place” theoretical framework.

3.4. Popular Research Areas and Trends

3.4.1. Keyword Clustering Analysis

Keywords briefly indicate the research directions of papers in a certain field, and the keywords clustering graph produced by Citespace can represent the associations between the keywords of the selected papers (Figure 7). The result of the keywords clustering analysis presented 21 clusters in the constructed map. The cluster structure is significant, with modularity Q = 0.7266. All the clusters were confirmed to have silhouette values greater than 0.5, indicating that their structures were reasonable.

Table 8. Top 10 keyword clusters by size.

Cluster ID	Size	Silhouette	Mean Cited Year	Label (LLR)
0	56	0.768	2011	Physical activity
1	45	0.818	2006	Attachment
2	43	0.842	2007	Index
3	43	0.924	2004	Mortality
4	40	0.868	2006	Sense of community
5	40	0.908	2012	Place attachment
6	39	0.841	2014	Citizen participation
7	38	0.868	2003	Fear of Crime
8	36	0.804	2012	Mental health
9	35	0.889	2005	Social capital

shows the top 10 keyword clusters with their details: Cluster #0 was labeled “physical activity”, and the included papers emphasized the relationship between sense of community and neighborhood planning, with the elderly being the population group that received most concern [63]; Cluster #1 was labeled “attachment”, and the included papers emphasized that residents’ social interaction and life satisfaction are positively related to NSOC [64]; Cluster #2 was labeled “index”, and the included papers emphasized concepts and measurement scales of NSOC [65]; Cluster #3 was labeled “mortality”, and the included papers emphasized the health of the elderly, including both physical and mental health [66]; Cluster #4 was labeled “sense of community”, and the included papers emphasized the relationship between NSOC and other types of sense of community, such as school sense of community [67] and ethnic sense of community [29]; Cluster #5 was labeled “place attachment”, and the included papers emphasized the concepts of place attachment in relation to sense of community [41], and the associations between NSOC and places [68]; Cluster #6 was labeled “citizen participation”, and the included papers emphasized how citizen participation contributes to collective efficacy, NSOC, and neighborhood organizations [64]; Cluster #7 was labeled “fear of crime”, and the included papers emphasized the impact of safe social environment on NSOC [69]; Cluster #8 was labeled “mental health”, and the included papers emphasized examination of NSOC in people with mental issues, and the mediating role of NSOC between the built environment and mental health [31]; Cluster #9 was labeled “social capital”, and the included papers emphasized the mutual catalytic relationship between NSOC and social capital [70].

3.4.2. Keyword Bursting Analysis

The keywords burst refers to the phenomenon in which the use of certain keywords in papers in a research domain has risen rapidly. Figure 8 provides a list of the most frequently cited keywords in different time periods, and illustrates the primary study topics in the NSOC fields and their evolutions. Figure 8 also displays the period when each keyword was first used and the length of time it has been used, which reflects the durability of keywords’ significance in the study field. Additionally, the blue lines show the time span of the entire research period, whereas the red lines show the length of time in which the citation burst was in effect. In order to conduct a more precise investigation into NSOC research topics and the way in which they evolved from 1986 to 2022, the entire study period was divided into two phases based on the number of annual publications: the fluctuation growth phase (1986–2015) and the rapid growth phase (2016–2022).

(1) The fluctuation growth phase (1986–2015)

Because NSOC is a topic within sense of community research, it did not get much attention when it first emerged, and thus has experienced a long fluctuating growth phase for almost 30 years. In this phase, there were a total of 18 keyword bursts. However, the first keyword burst appeared in 1994, indicating that few studies on NSOC were conducted before 1994. “Psychological sense”, “urban environment”, and “adolescent” were the three keyword bursts with the longest durations. It can be concluded that the scholars were interested in the concept of NSOC, the relationship between NSOC and urban environment, and impacts of NSOC on adolescents’ mental health. In correspondence with the change of keyword bursts, it can be concluded that theories of New Urbanism played an increasingly important role in influencing NSOC studies, as more and more scholars focused on the relationship between NSOC and walkable environments during this period.

(2) The rapid growth phase (2016–2022)

The rapid growth phase was a relatively short span of only seven years, and only seven keyword bursts; “inequality”, “residential satisfaction”, “sustainability”, “mobility”, “public health”, “green space”, and “well” appeared in this period. Among the seven keyword bursts, “mobility” had the longest duration, which focused on the NSOC issues in the context of population mobility, such as urban gentrification [45] and immigration [71].

4. Discussion and Conclusions

The term “neighborhood sense of community” refers to a broad notion that considers not only psychological, but also social and environmental factors, which contributes to sustainable neighborhoods through strengthening social bonds and creating social capital. Because numerous NSOC studies have been conducted in recent years, and cover a wide range of subject areas, it is important and necessary to acquire a thorough understanding of NSOC research. Thus, this study aims to enhance comprehension of the knowledge structure and development trends of NSOC research. Citespace was used for bibliometric analysis and knowledge domain visualization. The number of publications of NSOC research has grown rapidly since 2015. Despite it having declined from 2020 to 2022, the number of annual publications in these three years is greater than that before 2015, indicating that NSOC research continued to attract the attention of scholars in recent years. In addition, NSOC research covered a wide range of subject categories, including urban studies, public health, environmental studies, social work, and urban planning, showing that NSOC research is multidisciplinary. Regarding journals cited, the Journal of Community Psychology was the most influential one.

There have been instances of inadequate collaboration between authors and research institutions, as there were no core authors and no core institutions in NSOC research. The most influential authors were Lisa Wood and Billie Giles-Corti, who had the most publications with the highest citation frequency. They were both interested in the relationship between NSOC and the neighborhood built environment, such as public spaces and walkable environments [21,43]. The most influential institution was the University of Michigan; its scholars usually focused on the impact of NSOC on residents’ social lives, such as their subjective well-being and community empowerment. As for collaboration networks across countries, scholars in the USA published the largest number of publications, and the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain were the core countries in the collaboration network. It can be concluded that the Western countries contributed most to the collaboration network.

After conducting reference co-citation clustering analysis, the primary knowledge in the field of NSOC can be summed up with the following indexing terms: (1) Place attachment; (2) Social life; (3) Urban form; (4) Community organization; (5) Exploring adolescents’ sense; (6) Psychological sense; (7) Cultural capital; (8) Perth Western Australia; (9) Mental wellbeing; (10) Neighborhood planning. Among the cited references, Wood, Frank and Giles-Corti [58], Francis, Giles-Corti, Wood and Knuiman [21], and Wilson [59] played crucial roles and significantly contributed to knowledge development in the research field.

After conducting keyword co-citation clustering analysis, the primary research hotspots in the field of NSOC can be summed up with the following indexing terms: (1) Physical activity; (2) Attachment; (3) Index; (4) Mortality; (5) Sense of community; (6) Place attachment; (7) Citizen participation; (8) Fear of crime; (9) Mental health; and (10) Social capital. Additionally, the keyword bursts analysis presented the research trends in different stages: in the fluctuation growth stage, “psychological sense”, “urban environment ” and “adolescent” were the topics with the longest durations; in the rapid growth stage, “inequality”, “residential satisfaction”, “sustainability”, “mobility”, “public health”, “green space”, and “well” were popular topics.

The research results reveal that the scope of NSOC research covers a wide range of subject areas. The changes in keywords and their bursts reflect that NSOC research has gradually become diverse and multidisciplinary. In general, NSOC research can be divided into five aspects: (1) the concepts of NSOC; (2) the measurement scales of NSOC; (3) the impact of the neighborhood built environment on NSOC; (4) the mediating role of NSOC between the built environment and residents’ mental health and subjective well-being; (5) the relationship between NSOC and other social factors, such as social capital, social cohesion, and safety. Usually, the different research aspects were interlinked and successive. For example, the concepts of NSOC are the basis, and the scales are the tools, for other research aspects. Thus, despite these two aspects appearing earlier than other aspects in NSOC research, research on these two aspects is still ongoing.

Through examining the existing research, limitations have been found, such as the need for some measurement scales to be further verified when they are used in different contexts; and some research findings are not generalizable enough to cover wider population samples. Because existing NSOC research was usually conducted in an urban context, the study of NSOC in rural areas can be regarded as one of the future directions it is likely to take. Additionally, the number of immigration populations is increasing in many countries, such as the USA and the UK, which may cause some social and environmental issues. Thus, building NSOC in immigration populations is also an important research topic for the future.

In 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) claimed that “sustainable cities and communities start with sustainable neighborhoods” and issued Integrated Guidelines for Sustainable Neighborhood Design [72]. Because NSOC is an important factor in advancing the sustainable development of neighborhoods, the related research tends towards the role of NSOC in creating neighborhoods with more green spaces and less carbon emissions to meet the development goal of smart communities and cites. In this sense, future studies on NSOC can be conducted in the context of smart communities and cities. In addition, as the negative impact of COVID-19 on people’s mental and physical health is still continuing, future studies should consider the relationship between the impact of COVID-19 and NSOC, and the elderly should be given considerable attention, because old people are more vulnerable, and more countries will face problems related to ageing populations.