Global research trends on consumer attitudes toward sustainability using bibliometric methods

As sustainable development takes center stage, understanding consumer attitudes toward sustainability has gained significant scholarly attention. A bibliometric analysis of 258 peer-reviewed documents published between 2000 and 2025, extracted from the Scopus database, was conducted to gain insights into the intellectual evolution of consumer sustainability studies. Performance analysis and bibliographic coupling were carried out in VOSviewer and complemented by a content-based reading of the coupled documents, from which six thematic clusters were derived: green marketing, emotional engagement, and brand loyalty; consumer attitudes toward sustainability cues and product information; consumer response to ethical branding and sustainability communication; marketing-mix and packaging strategies for sustainable products; sustainable mobility and food-consumption practices; and circular-economy and value-chain sustainability in food and fashion. The findings demonstrate a marked increase in publications on this topic since 2015. The most impactful article and the most productive author in this domain have been identified. Digital product information forms a small but growing strand, whereas cross-cultural and cross-generational comparisons remain scarce. Future research directions include cross-cultural influences on consumer sustainability attitudes; cross-generational research; technology-enabled transparency, including artificial intelligence and blockchain, neither of which appears in the analysed corpus; and further exploration of emerging markets in this context.