Environmental tax policy and carbon mitigation: Mapping global research trends through a bibliometric analysis (2015-2025)

Environmental tax policy has become an increasingly important component of global climate governance, stimulating a growing body of research on its role in supporting carbon mitigation. Despite this expanding literature, a comprehensive understanding of its intellectual development remains limited. This study maps the evolution and intellectual structure of research on environmental tax policy and carbon mitigation during the period 2015-2025. Using a dataset of 678 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from the Scopus database, a bibliometric analysis was performed through Biblioshiny (R) and VOSviewer to evaluate scientific performance, thematic evolution, and knowledge structures. The findings reveal a clear transition from general discussions of environmental fiscal instruments toward more policy-oriented and mechanism-based research, with carbon tax emerging as the dominant conceptual node connecting climate policy, renewable energy, and sustainable development. The results also indicate increasing integration between computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling and environmental policy analysis, while highlighting a strong geographical concentration of research activity in a limited number of countries. By synthesizing the evolution of this research domain, the study contributes to a better understanding of how environmental taxation has developed within the broader climate policy literature and identifies promising directions for future research and policy development.