Assessing Behavioral Finance Research Trends Globally: A Bibliometric Approach with Scopus Data

Abstract

This bibliometric study examines global research trends in behavioral finance by analyzing publication volume, citation patterns, key contributors, and emerging themes in the field during the last decade using Scopus data. Behavioral finance is a combination of traditional financial models with psychological insight explained for market anomalies that traditional models tend to miss. This work offers a quantitative overview of the growth of the field, in terms of its most influential authors, collaborative networks, and leading publishing journals. A substantial increase in research output, with leading countries and institutions publishing key publications that provide a solid foundation for behavioral finance. Investor psychology, decision-making biases, and risk perception are top research topics, with recent expansion into digital finance and sustainable investing reflecting the field’s ability to keep up with contemporary financial problems. This study also identifies the themes evolving through keyword co-occurrence and citation analysis indicating an increasing focus on interdisciplinary research connecting finance to psychology, economics, and cognitive science. Active partnerships between countries and institutions are revealed by collaboration patterns, and the research landscape is shown to be highly networked and globalized. Scopus represents a superb dataset, but the analysis of database exclusivity suggests that future work should include additional sources for a broader perspective. This study provides a useful resource for researchers and practitioners alike by charting the key developments and future directions in behavioral finance thereby providing a more integrated understanding of the role of psychological factors in financial markets and encouraging more informed and stable financial decision-making practices.