Eudaimonia: Concept, review and research agenda

Eudaimonia, a philosophical notion derived from Aristotelian ethics, holds a significant position in contemporary social science literature. Despite the increasingly scholarly interest in eudaimonia, systematic reviews investigating the evolution and applications of eudaimonic concepts remain limited. The current research adopts a bibliometric approach, employing diverse units of analysis, including authors, sources, countries, organisations, and keywords, to examine the intellectual structure of eudaimonic literature. The study encompasses 2319 documents published in prominent academic sources from 1980 to 2024, as indexed by the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The analysis performed using the Bibliometrix R package and VOSviewer software reveals a steadily growing body of research that is interdisciplinary in nature. The author conducted a scoping review of 517 articles published between 2021 and 2025 in leading domains, such as psychology, recreation, occupational science, ethics, business, development studies, and education, that have significantly advanced eudaimonic research. Findings from the bibliometric and scoping reviews were synthesised to develop a conceptual model that captures the multidimensional and cross-disciplinary nature of eudaimonia.