Abstract
PurposeThis paper aims to study the intellectual landscape of green purchase (GP) literature, visualize and analyse the temporal evolution, thematic mapping of emerging and future research themes using a systematic and quantitative literature review approach.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a bibliometric analysis and examines the bibliometric metadata consisting of 440 studies extracted from the Scopus database for the years 1990–2022 within the GP field.FindingsThe findings based on performance analysis and visualization networks reveal the productivity trend of GP by years, authors, academic relationships, international collaborations, top cited publications, most occurring keywords, existing and emerging themes and temporal theme evolution.Research limitations/implicationsIt provides a broader/macro view of the topic and lacks specificity and deeper analysis, which can be addressed in future bibliometric studies.Practical implicationsThe integration of topics contributes to the development of the intellectual landscape of the GP research field and suggests thrust areas for future research. The study offers important implications for the academic community to gain a comprehensive and global understanding of green purchasing.Originality/valueThis research is unique as previous studies have not quantitatively compiled and extensively analysed work of these characteristics on the area under study using bibliometrics.