Bibliometric Analysis of Micromobility Literature: Trends, Key Players, and Thematic Clusters

Abstract
Purpose: Micro-mobility has rapidly emerged as a transformative component of urban transportation systems, encompassing e-scooters, shared bicycles, and other lightweight personal mobility devices. As cities confront escalating challenges related to congestion, air pollution, climate change, and inequitable access to mobility, micro-mobility has been widely promoted as a flexible, low-emission, and cost-effective solution for short-distance travel. Over the past decade—particularly since 2017—academic interest in this field has grown substantially. However, despite the increasing volume of scholarly publications, a systematic understanding of the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and global research patterns in micro-mobility remains limited. Existing studies tend to focus on specific aspects such as safety, environmental impacts, or user behavior, without offering a comprehensive overview of the field as a whole. The primary purpose of this study is therefore to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the micro-mobility literature to map its knowledge structure, identify dominant research themes and thematic clusters, analyze publication and citation trends, identify leading authors, institutions, countries, and journals, and highlight emerging research gaps. By examining peer-reviewed publications indexed in the Scopus database between 2017 and 2025, this study aims to provide a structured, evidence-based, and replicable overview of how the field has evolved, who the key contributors are, which topics have received the greatest scholarly attention, and which areas remain underexplored. Ultimately, the research seeks to support academics, urban planners, and policymakers in identifying future research priorities and strategic directions for sustainable urban mobility planning.
Methodology: This study adopts a quantitative bibliometric approach. A systematic search was conducted in the Scopus citation database using the term "micro-mobility" and its associated variants—including e-scooters, shared bicycles, dockless bikes, and e-bikes—in titles, abstracts, and keywords, covering the period from 2017 to 2025, the timeframe during which micro-mobility gained substantial academic visibility. The initial retrieval yielded 768 records. After applying systematic screening criteria—including removal of duplicates, non-peer-reviewed outputs, irrelevant documents, and publications outside the thematic scope—586 articles were retained for final analysis. Bibliographic data including authors, affiliations, publication year, keywords, abstracts, and citation counts were extracted for each document. Two specialized bibliometric tools were employed in the analysis: VOSviewer for constructing keyword co-occurrence networks, co-authorship maps, and bibliographic coupling visualizations; and the Bibliometrix package within the R statistical environment for computing performance indicators, tracking annual publication trends, and mapping thematic evolution across the study period. The combination of these two tools enabled both quantitative performance analysis and visual knowledge mapping of the micro-mobility research landscape.
Findings: The results demonstrate rapid and consistent growth in scholarly output on micro-mobility. Annual publications increased from a single article in 2017 to 167 articles in 2025, reflecting an annual growth rate of 89.6% and confirming that the field has become a central topic in urban mobility research. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have further accelerated this trend by positioning micro-mobility as a socially distanced alternative to crowded public transit. From a geographical perspective, the United States leads with 121 articles, followed by China (52), the United Kingdom (35), Germany (31), and Italy (30). The journal Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment dominates with 54 articles and 3,308 citations (h-index = 30), followed by Transportation Research Part A and Sustainability. The most-cited single article—McKenzie's spatiotemporal comparison of scooter-share and bike-share usage in Washington D.C.—has accumulated 364 citations. Among the most prolific authors, Kay W. Axhausen, Naroa Coretti-Sánchez, and Kent Larson each contributed seven publications. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identified five major thematic clusters: (1) urban policy and governance, (2) sustainability, equity and access, (3) safety and travel behavior, (4) technology and data-driven analytics, and (5) shared mobility systems and fleet operations.
Conclusion: This bibliometric review confirms that micro-mobility has matured into a distinct interdisciplinary field within urban transportation research. By systematically mapping research trends, thematic clusters, leading contributors, and collaboration networks, this study offers a structured reference for scholars, urban planners, and policymakers. The findings reveal a pronounced geographic concentration of research output in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia, pointing to significant knowledge gaps in developing regions. Substantial research gaps also persist in the areas of transport equity, data governance frameworks, lifecycle environmental assessment, and seamless integration with public transit networks. Future research should prioritize these underexplored domains to support sustainable and inclusive urban mobility transitions. The evidence-based insights provided by this study can guide future research agendas and inform strategic decision-making aimed at maximizing the societal and environmental benefits of micro-mobility adoption in cities worldwide.