A stakeholder framework and research trends for enhancing inclusive playgrounds based on bibliometric analysis

Inclusive playgrounds are safe, fun, and interactive play environments created to meet the needs and abilities of all children, regardless of disabilities. With the increasing awareness of inclusiveness in society, the research and practice of inclusive playgrounds are also developing. To understand the research progress and trends in this area, this paper employs bibliometric analysis, a method that plays a crucial role in academic evaluation, to reveal the evolution and current state of this field. This study mainly utilizes relevant literature on inclusive playgrounds from the Web of Science Core Collection as the data source. CiteSpace software was used to generate visual maps, providing a visualization analysis of research conducted on inclusive playgrounds from 1994 to 2023. This includes constructing collaboration maps of countries, institutions, and authors and analyzing highly cited papers and involved disciplines. Particular emphasis is placed on the co-occurrence frequency of keywords, keyword clustering, and burst keyword analysis to explore significant research focuses and trends in this field so that the authors developed a framework concerning the roles of key stakeholders of inclusive playgrounds in the design, implementation, and use of inclusive playgrounds, as well as their concerns and considerations, to provide insights into the progress and future direction of inclusive playgrounds research.