Educational interventions for environmentally oriented life projects: A bibliometric analysis of global trendsAbstract
The intensification of the climate crisis and the rise of eco-anxiety among young people contrast with the still partial integration of life projects, environmental citizenship and education for sustainable development into education systems. The objective was to describe and quantitatively analyze the evolution of research on educational interventions aimed at developing environmentally oriented life projects, identifying temporal, geographical and thematic patterns, collaboration networks and influential sources. Bibliometric mapping was applied in Scopus using a trilingual search strategy, with a search conducted on November 14, 2025, which retrieved 1071 documents published between 1963 and 2025 in 699 sources, analyzed using Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, Lotka’s Law and Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy RPYS. The results show an annual growth rate of 6.33%, 3478 authors with 3.47 co-authors per article and 16.62% international collaboration, leadership by the United States 304 documents, the United Kingdom 101 and Australia 64, a predominance of social sciences 29.6%, medicine 14.8% and psychology 12.9%, and a concentration in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Youth and Adolescence and Sustainability (Switzerland). The field connects psychological wellbeing, future orientation and sustainability, although it still shows limited attention to climate change and education for sustainable development, and it needs to expand its networks with Global South to design contextualized interventions that strengthen youth agency and environmentally responsible life projects.
Keywords:
Eco-anxiety; Environmental citizenship; Future orientation; Science mapping; Sustainable education
Resumo
A intensificação da crise climática e o aumento da ecoansiedade entre jovens contrastam com a integração ainda parcial entre projetos de vida, cidadania ambiental e educação para o desenvolvimento sustentável nos sistemas educativos. O objetivo foi descrever e analisar quantitativamente a evolução da pesquisa sobre intervenções educativas orientadas ao desenvolvimento de projetos de vida com enfoque ambiental, identificando padrões temporais, geográficos e temáticos, redes de colaboração e fontes infiuentes. Aplicou-se cartografia bibliométrica na base Scopus por meio de uma equação de busca trilíngue, com levantamento em 14 de novembro de 2025, que recuperou 1071 documentos publicados entre 1963 e 2025 em 699 fontes, processados com Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, Lei de Lotka e Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy RPYS. Os resultados indicam crescimento anual de 6,33%, 3478 autores com 3,47 coautores por artigo e 16,62% de colaboração internacional, liderança dos Estados Unidos 304 documentos, Reino Unido 101 e Austrália 64, predomínio das ciências sociais 29,6%, da medicina 14,8% e da psicologia 12,9%, e concentração em periódicos como Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Youth and Adolescence e Sustainability Switzerland. O campo articula bem-estar psicológico, orientação para o futuro e sustentabilidade, mas ainda apresenta baixa presença de temas relacionados às mudanças climáticas e à educação para o desenvolvimento sustentável, e requer a ampliação das redes com o Sul Global para conceber intervenções contextualizadas que fortaleçam a agência juvenil e os projetos de vida ambientalmente responsáveis.
Palavras-chave:
Ecoansiedade; Cidadania ambiental; Orientação para o futuro; Mapeamento científico; Educação sustentável
Introduction
The climate crisis is rapidly altering the living conditions of children, adolescents, and young people (Ali Siyal, 2025). UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index estimates that nearly 1 billion children are at “extremely high risk”, which represents almost half of the global child population, exposed to coastal flooding, heatwaves, cyclones, water scarcity and air pollution (Briscioli, 2023; UNICEF, 2021b). Additional data indicate that approximately 240 million children are highly exposed to coastal flooding, while projections for the 2050s suggest up to an eightfold increase in the number of children exposed to extreme heatwaves compared with levels of the 2000s (Ärlemalm-Hagsér; Elliott, 2025; UNICEF, 2021a) global temperature thresholds (Steffen et al., 2018). This scenario not only jeopardizes physical health and educational continuity, it also heightens psychosocial vulnerability and the sense of threat regarding the future (Yao; Dai, 2025).
Recent research has documented in detail the emotional burden that accompanies this situation (Sharma; Stephen, 2026). A study involving 10,000 young people aged 16 to 25 years in ten countries showed that 59% felt “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, 84% were at least moderately worried and 75% consider the future “frightening”. In addition, 45% report that these concerns interfere with sleep, concentration or enjoyment of daily life (Hickman et al., 2021; Kerse; Kerse, 2025). Recent reviews of eco-anxiety in childhood and adolescence have identified similar patterns and highlighted that distress increases when young people perceive governmental responses to the environmental crisis as insufficient or contradictory (Hurley; Dalglish; Sacks, 2022; Thereza Couto et al., 2025). These data suggest that educational support can no longer be limited to transmitting scientific information about the climate, but must strengthen resources of meaning, agency and realistic hope (Henschel; Franke; Jagla-Franke, 2025). International frameworks position the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a central reference for linking education, climate and citizenship (Vaniev; Malt-Cullen, 2025; Witenstein et al., 2025). Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, implemented through Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), defines six priority areas, education, training, public awareness, public participation, access to information and international cooperation, as the basis for an effective social response to climate change (Lasker; Flener Lovitt, 2024). In the 2030 Agenda, targets 4.7 of SDG 4, 12.8 of SDG 12 and
13.3 of SDG 13 state that education for sustainable development, climate change education and global citizenship should be integrated into policies, curricula, teacher education and assessment, monitored through the joint indicator 4.7.1/12.8.1/13.3.1 (Holst et al., 2024; Kharbanda; Singh; Sharma, 2022; Rahman; Rosli, 2025; Zummo et al., 2024). Recent reports indicate that approximately 95% of countries state that they incorporate these approaches into their education systems, mainly through the curriculum, although there are still important gaps in teacher education and assessment mechanisms (Mochizuki, 2025). This situation shows that the normative scaffolding is available, but it has not yet been translated into pedagogical experiences that explicitly link the SDGs with the construction of sustainable and environmentally responsible life projects, through which students recognize themselves as agents of climate justice and ecosystem protection (Tafese; Kopp, 2025).
For the purposes of this study, life projects are defined as future-oriented configurations that integrate aspirations, values, goals and commitments into a trajectory shaped by educational experiences and social participation. This concept is broader than purpose. Whereas purpose refers to a relatively stable sense of meaning and intention that gives coherence to personal trajectories and connects them to contributions to others and to the common good, life projects operate here as the broader educational category through which schools can connect youth development, environmental citizenship and sustainability (Damon, 2008; Damon; Menon; Cotton Bronk, 2003; Izzati et al., 2026).
Despite these regulatory advances, educational content on sustainability and climate change remains partial (Yang et al., 2025). The report “Education and Climate Change: Learning to Act for People and Planet” analyzed curricula from 76 countries and found that, on average, curricula achieved half of the maximum possible score for environmental and sustainability content, but only 21% of the maximum score for climate content and approximately 12% for biodiversity (Copsey et al., 2024; UNESCO, 2025). This indicates that education systems are progressing in the incorporation of environmental topics, although they still offer a limited and fragmented treatment of climate impacts, associated ethical dilemmas and pathways for collective action (Lepičnik Vodopivec; Šindić, 2025). Global initiatives, such as the Education for Sustainable Development network the ESD-Net 2030 and school programs such as Eco-Schools show the transformative potential of comprehensive learning experiences (Shauri; Mwakumanya; Lusweti, 2024). Eco-Schools, for example, brings together more than 51,000 institutions in 67 countries and involves around 19 million students in school environmental projects focused on active participation (McKenzie et al., 2025). However, these efforts are still not systematically linked to the development of youth life projects (Bylund; Knutsson; Lindberg, 2025).
Research in developmental and well-being psychology indicates that the purposive dimension of youth development is associated with better mental health, a lower incidence of risk behaviors, greater academic persistence and stronger civic engagement, with effects documented in longitudinal studies that, in some cases, have explained between 30% and 50% of the variance in well-being and psychosocial adjustment indicators in young people and emerging adults (Copsey et al., 2024; McKenzie; Gulson, 2023). In contexts of high uncertainty, such as the climate crisis and the post-pandemic period, this purposive dimension becomes especially relevant to life projects oriented towards environmental commitments and socially responsible futures (Yang et al., 2025; Zhang et al., 2025).
Recent evidence from Latin America highlights the relevance of these processes (Mejia et al., 2024). A study involving 1,026 Peruvian university students aged 17 to 30 years analyzed positive predictors of the purposive dimension measured as purpose in life from the Positive Youth Development (PYD) model. The results indicated that competences such as confidence, perceived competence, support, commitment to learning and positive identity explain approximately 49.5% of the variance purpose in life (Rojas Zegarra et al., 2025). Similar findings in European and Latin American adolescents indicate that the presence of internal and external developmental assets is linked to higher levels of life satisfaction, resilience and vocational clarity (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2024). These findings reinforce the idea that strengthening consistent, prosocial life projects is a key strategy for promoting mental health and civic participation among young people (Roldán Merino et al., 2025).
At the intersection between life projects, the purposive dimension of development and environmental education, programs have begun to emerge that intentionally address meaning in life alongside ecological awareness (Fang; Fu, 2025). A school trial with 614 secondary students in northern Italy showed that a Well-Being Therapy intervention conducted in school settings, combined with activities for reflection on personal goals, significantly increased life purpose scores compared with a psychoeducational control group, with moderate effect sizes and sustained improvements at follow-up (Ruini et al., 2023). Reviews of school-based mental well-being interventions indicate that programs which integrate socio-emotional competences, reflection on goals and community participation tend to achieve greater average benefits on depressive symptoms and life satisfaction than programs focused solely on information or academic skills (Nielsen; Ma, 2023). However, a substantial proportion of these experiences does not explicitly incorporate the ecological dimension or the connection between life projects and concrete environmental action (Jasbi, 2024).
Within this convergence of challenges, the school setting emerges as a strategic context for the development of life projects with an environmental focus (Harris; González; Vrla, 2025). Schools bring together most adolescents and young people, channel policies on education for sustainable development and connect with community initiatives, international networks and student environmental action programs (Bauer; Morlock, 2025). At the same time, the evidence presented reveals a mismatch between the magnitude of the climate threat, the associated subjective distress and the still limited integration of life projects, environmental citizenship and the SDGs in current educational proposals (Isenaj et al., 2025).
Understanding the links between education for sustainable development, youth well-being and life projects with an environmental focus, with the aim of guiding effective educational interventions to strengthen youth agency and commitment to the SDGs, first requires a broad examination of the theoretical and methodological development of the field over recent decades. This framework leads to the central research question, what is the level of scientific development on educational interventions aimed at developing life projects with an environmental focus, and how has it evolved over time? On this basis, eleven specific questions are formulated, i) how has the scientific production on educational interventions linked to life projects and environmental focus in school and university contexts evolved over time?, ii) what types of documents predominate, and what is their relative weight in the period analyzed?, iii) which subject areas are most associated within the databases considered and how are they distributed?, iv) which institutions and countries lead production and what is their relative contribution?, v) who are the most influential authors and how are their trajectories and collaborations characterized?, vi) to what extent does author productivity fit Lotka’s Law and what does this indicate about the concentration of scientific leadership in this field?, vii) which journals concentrate the widest dissemination of research on life projects with an environmental focus and related educational interventions?, viii) what is the level of international collaboration among countries and institutions researching these interventions?, ix) what does Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) reveal about the historical roots, conceptual milestones and years of greatest impact?, x) which seminal publications, educational models or normative frameworks explain the citation peaks detected in the RPYS?, and
xi) which trends and emerging lines guide the future agenda according to the dynamics of keywords and the thematic map around life projects with an environmental focus?
In relation to these questions, the general objective is to describe and quantitatively analyze the evolution of research on educational interventions for the development of life projects with an environmental focus, by identifying temporal, geographical and thematic patterns, collaboration networks and influential sources, in order to provide evidence to support the design educational programs that strengthen youth agency and sustainability.
Methodology
To characterize the scientific development of educational interventions for life projects with an environmental focus, bibliometric mapping was applied as a quantitative method based on mathematical and statistical models, to analyze scientific production and patterns of academic communication in this field. This approach makes it possible to synthesize trends, identify influential authors, institutions and countries, and detect research gaps and emerging lines within the domain “life projects, education and environmental focus”.
The application of the method followed the stages proposed by Luna-Morales; Pérez-Angón; Luna-Morales (2023), i) formulation of the general and specific research questions, ii) selection of the reference database, iii) construction of a reproducible search equation and iv) statistical analysis and visualization of the retrieved metadata. The study adopted a quantitative approach at an exploratory-descriptive level, with a non-experimental, longitudinal and retrospective design. The analytical strategy focused on tracing and interpreting the evolution of the scientific literature on educational interventions linked to the development of life projects with an environmental focus in school and university contexts, in order to reconstruct the historical trajectory of the field, identify turning points and estimating its degree of thematic consolidation.
On the basis of the research questions, a canonical equation was constructed that brings together the key terms in the domain “life project”, “education” and “environmental focus”, as well as their main equivalents in English, Spanish and Portuguese. This trilingual strategy sought to reduce language bias, strengthen coverage of Latin American and Iberian research, and improve the capture of non-Anglophone educational interventions indexed in Scopus, which is consistent with the international scope of the field. The query included Spanish terms such as educación, escuela, aprendizaje, currículo and educación ambiental, sostenibilidad, cambio climático, as well as Portuguese terms such as: educação, escola, aprendizagem, currículo and educação ambiental, sustentabilidade, mudanças climáticas. The search was conducted in Scopus on November 14, 2025, with no restrictions on language or time period, using the following formula, TITLE-ABS-KEY (“purpose in life” OR “life purpose” OR “life goals” OR “future orientation” OR “future aspirations” OR “youth purpose” OR “life project” OR “life projects” OR “proyecto de vida” OR “proyectos de vida” OR “projeto de vida” OR “projetos de vida”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (educat* OR school* OR “teaching” OR “learning” OR “curriculum” OR “student development” OR “youth development” OR educaci* OR escuela* OR “ensenanza” OR “enseñanza” OR aprendizaje OR curricul* OR “desarrollo estudiantil” OR “desarrollo juvenil” OR educaç* OR educac* OR escola* OR ensino OR aprendizagem OR curricul* OR “desenvolvimento estudantil” OR “desenvolvimento juvenil”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (environment* OR “environmental education” OR sustainability OR “education for sustainable development” OR “sustainable development” OR “environmental values” OR “environmental responsibility” OR “climate change” OR eco* OR ambiente* OR “educacion ambiental” OR “educación ambiental” OR sostenibil* OR “educacion para el desarrollo sostenible” OR “educación para el desarrollo sostenible” OR “desarrollo sostenible” OR “valores ambientales” OR “responsabilidad ambiental” OR “cambio climatico” OR “cambio climático” OR “meio ambiente” OR “educacao ambiental” OR “educação ambiental” OR sustentabil* OR “educacao para o desenvolvimento sustentavel” OR “educação para o desenvolvimento sustentável” OR “desenvolvimento sustentavel” OR “desenvolvimento sustentável” OR “valores ambientais” OR “responsabilidade ambiental” OR “mudancas climaticas” OR “mudanças climáticas”).
The search equation also included descriptors related to life projects and purpose in order to capture conceptual variants used in the indexed literature, although the interpretive framework of the study is centred on life projects as the main educational category.
Scopus was selected as the data source because of its multidisciplinary coverage, the quality of its metadata and the possibility of retrieving structured information on authors, affiliations, countries, journals and collaboration networks. The search retrieved 1071 records. All records were exported in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format for statistical processing. The corpus was then organized in spreadsheets and manually refined on thematic grounds, in order to exclude records that did not explicitly address educational interventions, life projects or environmental approaches. This refinement sought to retain empirical studies, reviews and interventions that articulated at least two of these axes (Osemwegie et al., 2023).
The bibliometric analysis was carried out using Bibliometrix version 5.1.1 in R and VOSviewer 1.6.20, calculating indicators of productivity, impact and collaboration, and incorporating Lotka’s Law to examine the distribution of author productivity (Aria; Cuccurullo, 2024). VOSviewer was used to construct keyword co-occurrence maps, co-authorship networks and bibliographic coupling, while the Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy model identified milestones and historical roots of the field, thereby enabling the characterization the intellectual structure, thematic evolution and collaboration networks on educational interventions aimed at life projects with an environmental focus (Sulphey et al., 2024; Van Eck; Waltman, 2024).
Results and discussion
Figure 1 presents the general bibliometric indicators of the corpus analyzed in Scopus. The corpus covers the period from 1963 to 2025 and comprises 1071 documents published across 699 sources, with a average annual growth rate of 6.33%. There are 3478 authors, 209 of whom sign single-authored works, with an average of 3.47 co-authors per publication and a level of international co-authorship of 16.62%. The corpus contains 3274 author keywords and 8892 references, has a mean age of 8.44 years per document and an average of 20.33 citations per article.
These indicators suggest that the field has achieved breadth and visibility but has not yet reached full theoretical and programmatic integration. The volume of sources and keywords suggests that research on environmentally oriented life projects is being built at the intersection of youth development, psychological well-being, sustainability education and public health, rather than within a single consolidated tradition. From the interpretive standpoint adopted in this manuscript, environmentally oriented life projects constitute the broader educational field within which several adjacent theoretical strands converge. One influential strand within this broader educational field concerns purpose-related research. Damon, Menon and Cotton Bronk (2003) defined purpose as a stable and meaningful intention with consequences beyond the self, and Moran (2023) later reframed the educational development of purpose through an eco-systemic lens. The current corpus suggests that purpose-related constructs constitute one relevant conceptual strand through which life projects can acquire motivational coherence and social direction. From this perspective, the field is not weak, but heterogeneous. Its next step is to move from adjacent conversations towards more cumulative intervention research capable of integrating life projects, purposive orientation, agency, environmental responsibility and educational practice within coherent programmed models, as also argued by Burrow (2023).
Figure 2 shows the annual evolution of scientific production between 1963 and 2025. During the first decades, only a small number of articles were published each year, with values close to zero until the early 1990s. From the 2000s onwards, there is a gradual increase that accelerates after 2013, with steady rises in publications. The highest output was recorded in 2024, with 114 documents, followed by a slight decrease in 2025, which gives rise to a clear upward curve.
This trajectory suggests that the field has moved from scattered antecedents to a phase of rapid expansion during the last decade. The acceleration is not accidental. It coincides with the stronger institutionalization of education for sustainable development after the 2030 Agenda and with the growing visibility of SDG Target 4.7, which Holst et al. (2024) describe as a key framework for mainstreaming sustainability across policies, curricula, teacher education and assessment. At the same time, climate-related distress and future uncertainty have become more visible among young people. Hickman et al. (2021) showed that climate anxiety among children and youth is strongly linked to negative views of the future, while Lewandowski et al. (2024) found that climate emotions increasingly shape beliefs and life plans among adolescents and young adults. In that context, the expansion of the field can be read primarily through life projects as the broader educational construct that links future orientation, sustainability and youth development. Within that construct, purpose is analytically useful because it clarifies one motivational and moral dimension through which life projects can acquire coherence and a beyond-the-self orientation in educational settings, in line with Damon, Menon and Cotton Bronk (2003) and Moran (2023).
Figure 3 presents the most productive authors in the field. Carol Diane Ryff ranks first with 5 documents, followed by Patrick L. Hill, James G. Murphy, Tan Lei Daniel Shek, Naomi Wentworth and Michael T. Willoughby, each with 4 publications. The next group comprises are Clancy B. Blair, Dick Botteldooren and Anthony L. Burrow, with 3 articles each. The graph shows a moderate concentration of output in a small group of researchers. The profile of these authors is revealing. Several of the most visible names are not specialists in environmental education in the narrow sense, but contributors to research on psychological well-being, youth development and future-oriented trajectories. This suggests that the scientific base of the field still depends heavily on theoretical contributions from developmental and motivational psychology. That dependence is productive because it offers robust constructs for understanding how adolescents organize aspirations, values and commitments. Viljanen and Kuusisto (2024) and Burrow (2023) have both highlighted how stable commitments connect personal direction with prosocial contribution. This helps explain why research on meaning, commitment and prosocial orientation remains visible across the corpus, although it is increasingly being absorbed into a broader educational conversation on life projects, identity and sustainability. At the same time, the authorship profile shows that environmentally oriented life projects have not yet generated a stable and self-contained canon of intervention research. The field remains in a bridging phase, where knowledge about purposive development, identity and well-being is progressively being reinterpreted within the broader educational framework of life projects for sustainability education.
Figure 4 presents the distribution of author productivity according to the number of documents published. The solid line indicates that about 90% of authors have published a single article, around 7% have two papers and less than 3% reach three or more publications. From two documents onwards, the curve flattens and concentrates very small proportions of productive researchers. The dashed line, corresponding to the theoretical Lotka model, approximates the empirical pattern across the whole observed range.
The fit with Lotka’s Law is consistent with a pattern typical of emerging interdisciplinary fields. A large proportion of researchers enter the topic through a single study, while only a small core sustains repeated production. In this case, that structure has a clear substantive implication. It suggests that the field still operates through episodic connections among scholars from psychology, education, sustainability and health, rather than through long-running programs devoted specifically to environmentally oriented life projects. Moran (2023) argued that future-oriented developmental processes depend on ecosystemic conditions rather than isolated factors, while Burrow (2023) insisted on the need for a translational science able to identify how such formative dimensions are actually cultivated. Read together, these arguments help explain why the literature is rich in concepts but thinner in replicable pedagogical models. The discussion of Figure 4 therefore points towards a practical need. The field now requires more stable, cumulative and ecologically grounded designs capable of translating these developmental dimensions within life projects into educational practice across classrooms, schools and communities.
Figure 5 presents the sources with the largest number of articles on educational interventions and life projects with an environmental focus. The ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition stands out with 12 contributions, followed by Frontiers in Psychology with 11 and the Journal of Youth and Adolescence with 10. Sustainability Switzerland appears next with 9 articles and the IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference EDUCON with 8. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and Healthcare Switzerland each report 6 papers, while the Journal of Adolescence, Frontiers in Education and Children and Youth Services Review contribute 5 articles each. Together, these ten sources account for 77 documents, approximately 7% of the total corpus.
This distribution reveals three dissemination circuits that currently structure the field. The first is developmental and positive psychology, where identity, well-being and future-oriented development are conceptualized. The second is sustainability and engineering education, where action-oriented pedagogies and project-based approaches are tested. The third is public health and youth services, where mental health, resilience and psychosocial adjustment are foregrounded. The coexistence of these circuits enriches the field, but it also fragments the intervention literature. Rap et al. (2022) showed that student agency for sustainability can be fostered when curricula engage learners with real-world data, argumentation and activism, while Zummo et al. (2024) demonstrated that climate empowerment in teacher education requires deliberate pedagogical rehearsal rather than incidental exposure. In parallel, Léger-Goodes et al. (2022) documented that eco-anxiety among children and adolescents has already become a relevant mental health concern. A program designed to foster environmentally oriented life projects therefore needs all three dimensions at once. It needs a theory of life projects that incorporates purposive orientation and aspirations, a pedagogical strategy for action and participation, and an understanding of the emotional conditions that support engagement.
Figure 6 shows the affiliations with the largest volume of publications in the field. The University of California ranks first, with 38 articles, followed by the College of Arts and Sciences with 26 and the Università degli Studi di Brescia with 23. Boston College and the Università del Salento each account for 17 papers, while the Not reported category, the Universidade de São Paulo and the Università di Pisa account for 15 articles per affiliation. The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Università degli Studi di Torino complete the group with 14 publications each. Together, these ten affiliations concentrate 194 documents, approximately18% of the total corpus.
The concentration of affiliations in North American and European universities indicates that the field has been shaped mainly by systems with strong research infrastructures and established traditions in youth development and educational innovation. The presence of Brazilian and Mexican universities is significant, as it shows that the topic is not confined to the Anglophone North. Even so, the institutional map remains uneven. This matters because life projects, environmental concern and educational aspirations are deeply context-sensitive. Moran (2023) emphasized that the purposive dimension of development is formed through interactions between individuals and their environments, while Witenstein et al. (2025) showed that education for sustainable development and global citizenship in higher education still display uneven adoption across institutional and regional contexts. Consequently, the institutional geography of the corpus does not only describe who publishes it. It also helps shape which youth experiences become visible, and which pedagogical responses are considered legitimate. A more globally balanced field could strengthen the design of interventions by incorporating diverse developmental ecologies, especially from regions where environmental disruption and educational inequality intersect more sharply.
Figure 7 presents the geographical distribution of scientific production. The United States ranks first with 304 documents, followed by the United Kingdom with 101 and Australia with 64 articles. Germany contributes 54 papers, while Italy and Spain each record 41 publications. India and the Netherlands each add 38 documents; Canada reaches 36 and the Undefined category represents 34. Together, these ten countries account for 751 articles, slightly more than approximately 70% of the total corpus of 1071 records.
This pattern reveals a marked asymmetry between where the field is most studied and where many of the most severe environmental vulnerabilities are experienced. Such asymmetry is not trivial. Educational interventions aimed at environmentally oriented life projects should help young people interpret their futures in relation to concrete socio-ecological conditions. Yet Hickman et al. (2021) found that climate anxiety varies across national contexts and is often stronger where young people perceive greater insecurity and institutional failure. Vergunst et al. (2024) also showed that climate worry is associated with current and prior mental health symptoms, which reinforces that context is not an accessory variable but part of the phenomenon itself. For that reason, the geographical pattern in Figure 7 supports the need for context-responsive intervention research and for stronger South-North collaboration if the field aims to generate educational models with broader relevance and greater sensitivity to issues of justice.
Figure 8 shows the cumulative temporal dynamics of ten key terms associated with environmentally oriented life projects. From the 1990s onwards, occurrences are zero or marginal, but they began to increase from 2005 and accelerate after 2015. By 2025 psychological well-being had accumulated 52 occurrences, followed by future orientation with 43 and education with 36. Higher education records 34 occurrences, while adolescence and adolescents reach 27 and 26 respectively. The terms well-being and sustainability accumulate 25 and 23 appearances, whereas resilience reaches 22 and mental health 20, which reflects sustained growth across all the conceptual axes analyzed.
The temporal behavior of these terms indicates that the field is no longer organized around educational trajectories. It is increasingly structured by psychosocial questions concerning how young people imagine the future, manage uncertainty and connect aspiration with action. Within the interpretive framework adopted here, life projects provide the broader educational lens for reading that shift because they organize aspirations, goals, values and commitments over time. The distinction between life projects and purpose is useful at this point because purpose, as defined by Damon, Menon and Cotton Bronk (2003), refers to a stable and meaningful intention oriented beyond the self, whereas life projects encompass the wider developmental and educational architecture in which such intentions take shape. The rise of psychological well-being, resilience and mental health alongside sustainability suggests that the literature is progressively framing environmentally oriented life projects not simply as vocational or civic pathways, but as resources for living under ecological uncertainty. Ojala (2012) showed that constructive hope can sustain environmental engagement among young people, and Kühner et al. (2025) confirmed through meta-analysis that climate anxiety has become a robust and expanding line of evidence. Taken together, these trends suggest that purpose-related meanings and future orientation are being mobilized within life projects as part of a broader attempt to connect environmental concern with meaningful developmental pathways.
Figure 9 shows the distribution of publications by subject area. Social sciences account for the largest share of the corpus, representing 29.6% of documents, followed by medicine with 14.8% and psychology with 12.9%. A second group comprises arts and humanities with 5.3%, engineering with 5.1%, business and management with 4.5%, environmental science with 4.4% and computer science with 4.2%. Finally, nursing contributes 2.9%, economics and finance 2.8%, while the set of other areas groups 13.4% of records.
This disciplinary profile indicates that the field has been driven primarily by educational, psychosocial and health concerns. Environmental issues often enter the literature through their effects on youth well-being, stress, coping or future outlook, rather than through deep curricular engagement with ecological systems, climate justice or sustainability transitions. Léger-Goodes et al. (2022) observed that much of the literature on eco-anxiety among younger populations is still organized around mental health consequences, while Holst et al. (2024) noted that mainstreaming education for sustainable development across curricula and teacher education remains uneven. This imbalance is one of the clearest findings of the corpus. It shows that the environmental dimension is present but often remains secondary to broader conversations on mental health, identity or educational development. Current evidence from climate distress research and SDG 4.7 monitoring points towards a more integrated approach, yet the disciplinary structure suggests that such integration is still incomplete. For that reason, environmentally oriented life projects will become a stronger educational construct when sustainability is treated not merely as context or outcome, but as a substantive dimension of how schools organize meaning, participation and future-oriented learning (Rap et al., 2022).
Figure 10 presents the keyword co-occurrence map constructed in VOSviewer from the 3,274 author keywords identified in the corpus. The graph displays a dense core in which education, future orientation, psychological well-being, adolescence, adolescents, mental health, resilience, sustainability, youth and well-being stand out, represented by larger nodes with strong connections between them. On the periphery, terms such as education for sustainable development, sustainable development, project-based learning, life goals, purpose in life, school engagement, qualitative research and inclusive education appear linking the central clusters. The color scale indicates that the most recent terms are concentrated in the interval 2018 to 2022, particularly in nodes related to sustainability, inclusive education and youth entrepreneurship.
The structure of this map allows for a more substantive interpretation of the field. Three conceptual axes converge at its core. The first is psychological well-being and mental health. The second is future orientation, life goals and other constructs associated with meaning and direction. The third is sustainability and education. Taken together, these axes suggest that the field is progressively moving towards an educational model in which young people are not only asked to know about environmental problems, but also to interpret who they want to become in relation to them. Within this architecture, life projects function as the broader pedagogical framework because they organize aspirations, values, transitions and commitments over time. Within that frame, constructs associated with meaning, commitment and beyond-the-self orientation help explain how life projects acquire motivational coherence, as proposed by Damon, Menon and Cotton Bronk (2003), expanded by Moran (2023), and systematized from a translational perspective by Burrow (2023).
Within this framework, life projects help clarify why agency emerges as a central mediating concept. When young people organize aspirations, commitments and future-oriented action around socio-ecological challenges, agency becomes the mechanism through which those projects are enacted in practice. Rap et al. (2022) found that stronger engagement with sustainability emerges when learners work with real-world data, scientific argumentation and opportunities for activism, while Guerra, Jiang and Du (2022) showed that student agency in project-based learning environments can support sustainability-oriented learning. Zummo et al. (2024) similarly argued that climate empowerment in teacher education requires deliberate pedagogical structures that connect scientific, civic and emotional dimensions of climate change. Figure 10 therefore does more than identify themes. It reveals a pedagogical pathway in which life projects provide the overarching educational framework, meaning and commitment support motivational coherence, agency enables enactment, and sustainability provides a moral and collective horizon for action.
At the same time, the relative peripherality of climate change and education for sustainable development is significant. These themes are visible, but they are not yet the dominant organizing center of the network. This suggests that the field is still closer to an emerging convergence than to a fully integrated paradigm. Holst et al. (2024) showed that SDG 4.7 still faces implementation gaps, and Witenstein et al. (2025) reported that higher education continues to address ESD and global citizenship in uneven ways. For the argument of this article, which is precisely the point. Literature already contains many of the components required for environmentally oriented life projects, but those components are still unevenly articulated. The educational challenge is therefore not to import a new concept into the field from outside, but to connect more explicitly the existing threads of meaning formation, climate-related concern, sustainability education and participatory action within the same intervention logic.
Figure 11 presents the Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy of the cited references covering the period from 1925 to 2022. The black line shows that annual number of cited references remain close to zero until the 1950s and begins to rise steadily from the 1970s. Notable peaks occur in 1968 with 23 citations, in 1977 with 44 and in 1979 with 39. From 1991 onwards, references exceed 100 annual citations and reached 109 in that year. They then grow sharply to more than 200 citations from 2000, with marked peaks in 2000 with 241, 2005 with 298, 2006 with 377, 2010 with 362, 2011 with a maximum of 386 and
2018 with 381 citations. After 2019, the curve gradually declines to 236 citations in 2022. The red line, which represents the deviation from the five-year moving median, records positive maxima in 1968 with +13, 1977 with +28, 1979 with +13, 1991 with +41, 2000
with +92, 2006 with +118 and 2011 with +83, indicating years of exceptional impact within the reference set.
The main RPYS peaks should be interpreted through references that account for the deviation in each year. In practical terms, Figure 11 does not display the thematic content of the field directly. It displays the publication years of cited references that later became unusually influential within the corpus. The peak output indicates that the 1968 deviation is mainly associated with identity formation and life-course development, 1977 with self-efficacy and social learning, 1979 with ecological development, 1991 with planned behavior and resilience-related approaches, 2000 with emerging adulthood, 2006 with thematic analysis and the operationalization of youth purpose, 2011 with the developmental asset’s framework, and 2018 with adolescent purpose assessment. For that reason, the interpretation of Figure 11 is historical rather than topical, because the figure identifies the years in which foundational references entered the cited base with exceptional force.
Read sequentially, these peaks suggest that the field did not consolidate around a single disciplinary source. Its reference base was assembled in successive layers, beginning with developmental and psychosocial theories and later expanding towards agency, behavior, measurement and educational interpretation. Figure 11 therefore supports a historically grounded reading of the field. The contemporary literature on environmentally oriented life projects inherits a reference base first built in developmental psychology and later expanded through measurement tools and educational and intervention-oriented frameworks. This also helps explain why sustainability enters the corpus mainly through youth development, well-being and future orientation, rather than as an autonomous line of inquiry established from the outset (Burrow, 2023; Viljanen; Kuusisto, 2024).
Figure 12 presents the thematic map constructed from the author’s keywords. The horizontal axis represents centrality, whereas the vertical axis represents density. In the quadrant of basic themes, two main clusters are concentrated. One large cluster integrates psychological well-being, future orientation, adolescence, adolescents, education, aspirations and students, and another brings together higher education, sustainability and sustainable development. In the quadrant of motor themes, four clusters are identified, centered on project-based learning, engineering education and academic performance, on stress, adaptation and university students, on learning together with future orientation and identity, and on expectation associated with China. The niche themes area groups clusters linked to machine learning and artificial intelligence, inclusive education and South Africa, together with climate change. In the quadrant of emerging or declining themes, three smaller groups are observed, formed by motivation, occupational therapy and the pair life goals and transitions.
Figure 12 shows that the conceptual center of the field is not climate change itself, but the articulation among psychological well-being, future-oriented development and educational settings. The largest basic-theme cluster on psychological well-being, which groups terms such as future orientation, adolescence, adolescents, well-being, resilience and mental health. A second basic cluster links higher education with sustainability and sustainable development. This configuration indicates that the field has achieved relatively high centrality around youth development and education, while the environmental dimension remains less central. Climate change appears in the niche quadrant, which means that it is present as a specialized theme, but it has not yet become one of the main organizing hubs of the field.
The motor themes reinforce this pattern. Project-based learning, engineering education and academic performance point to an applied pedagogical pathway, whereas stress, adaptation and university students mark an active socio-emotional line. The cluster combining learning, future orientation and identity, together with the emerging cluster life goals and transitions, indicates that questions of direction, identity and transition still structure the research agenda. Recent studies help explain why these clusters matter for intervention design. Agency-oriented pedagogies can strengthen sustainability learning when education is organized through participation, inquiry and action, while climate-related educational change also depends on coherent teacher education and system-level implementation of SDG 4.7 (Guerra; Jiang; Du, 2022; Holst et al., 2024; Rap et al., 2022; Zummo et al., 2024). At the same time, the centrality of well-being and the presence of stress and adaptation are consistent with current evidence showing that climate worry is intertwined with mental health and with the need for supportive educational environments (Davies et al., 2025; Vergunst et al., 2024). Figure 12 therefore suggests that the next stage of the field is to connect sustainability, agency, identity and well-being within the same educational architecture, rather than to treat them as separate lines.
Final considerations
This bibliometric analysis shows the expansion of a field in which life projects have become a point of convergence for psychological well-being, future orientation and sustainability education. Within that broader educational framework, the literature on meaning, commitment and beyond-the-self orientation helps explain how long-term aspirations acquire stability and social direction, as proposed by Damon, Menon and Cotton Bronk (2003). In school settings, this line has already informed intervention research, where indicators of purpose in life improved after well-being-oriented programs implemented with children and adolescents (Ruini et al., 2023). At the same time, recent evidence on eco-anxiety indicates that climate education is more constructive when it recognizes emotional responses and strengthens agency, coping and realistic hope, rather than relying only on risk communication (Hickman et al., 2021; Léger-Goodes et al., 2022).
From this perspective, the literature analyzed suggests that effective educational interventions should integrate at least four elements. First, they should help students articulate aspirations, values and commitments, so that sustainability becomes part of their life projects rather than an external curricular topic (Damon; Menon; Cotton Bronk, 2003; Ruini et al., 2023). Second, they should create structured opportunities for agency through inquiry, interpretation of real-world evidence, scientific argumentation and action in local contexts. Research on student agency for sustainability shows that awareness alone is insufficient, whereas agency is strengthened when pedagogical designs connect values, knowledge and situated action (Guerra; Jiang; Du, 2022; Rap et al., 2022). Third, interventions should include socio-emotional support, because climate-related concern can either mobilize or paralyze participation depending on whether educational settings provide tools for meaning-making, emotional regulation and collective efficacy (Hickman et al., 2021; Léger-Goodes et al., 2022). Fourth, programs should provide require relational conditions that sustain participation over time, since connectedness, belonging and engagement are associated with stronger student involvement in school-based change processes (Davies et al., 2025).
The analyzed literature also indicates that isolated actions are insufficient. Monitoring of SDG 4.7 has shown that education for sustainable development acquires greater consistency when it is embedded across curriculum, teacher education and assessment, rather than treated as a marginal topic (Holst et al., 2024). In the same direction, research on climate empowerment in teacher education shows that pedagogical rehearsal, scaffolding and institutional support are necessary if teachers are to address the scientific, ethical, civic and emotional dimensions of climate change in a coherent way (Zummo et al., 2024). Read in light of the thematic structure identified in this study, these findings suggest that the next generation of educational interventions should not separate environmental knowledge from youth development, but should connect life projects, sustainability, participation and well-being within the same pedagogical architecture.
A central implication of this study is that the contribution of the field should not be reduced to identifying publication trends, prolific authors or thematic clusters. What emerges from the corpus is a growing educational rationale for interventions that are future-oriented, relational and action-based. The literature therefore points beyond a narrow model centered solely on awareness. Instead, it points towards programs that help young people imagine desirable futures, examine their own values, build a sense of personal and collective efficacy, and participate in environmentally meaningful action (Guerra; Jiang; Du, 2022; Rap et al., 2022). In that sense, life projects with an environmental focus gain educational relevance when they function as organizing frameworks through which sustainability becomes personally meaningful and socially actionable (Damon; Menon; Cotton Bronk, 2003; Ruini et al., 2023).
Nevertheless, the field still presents an important gap. Although the literature has advanced in linking processes of meaning formation, youth development, well-being and sustainability within broader life projects, fewer studies assess integrated interventions that explicitly combine climate education, life projects, socio-emotional support and collective action, particularly in contexts outside the institutional centers that currently dominate publication output. This gap matters because recent work suggests that sustainability education requires stronger attention to action competence, contextual responsiveness and institutional embeddedness if it is to move from discourse to durable practice (Davies et al., 2025; Holst et al., 2024). For this reason, future research should move towards comparative and evaluative designs that examine not only attitudes and perceptions, but also agency, participation, connectedness, well-being and environmentally responsible action as educational outcomes.
These conclusions should be interpreted in light of several limitations. The study relies on Scopus metadata and a topic-based search strategy, which may underrepresent local and regional research not indexed in the database. In addition, bibliometric indicators identify structures, trends and thematic convergences, but they do not directly assess the quality, depth or contextual adequacy of the educational interventions reported in the primary literature. This limitation reinforces the need for the next phase of research to combine bibliometric mapping with systematic content analysis of intervention models, implementation conditions and educational outcomes.
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Source: Summary of main information generated in Bibliometrix, based on metadata extracted from Scopus.
Source: Produced in Bibliometrix, based on metadata extracted from Scopus.
Source: Generated in Bibliometrix.
Source: Generated in Bibliometrix.
Source: Generated in Bibliometrix.
Source: Note: Based on “Analyze results” in Scopus
Source: Generated in Bibliometrix.
Source: Based on “Analyze results” in Scopus
Source: Generated in VOSviewer.
Source: Generated in Bibliometrix. Peak interpretation was based on the Bibliometrix outputs of top references and influential references associated with the main RPYS deviation years.
Source: Generated in Bibliometrix. Thematic interpretation was based on cluster position in the centrality-density plane and on the terms composing each cluster.