How Subjective Well-being Evolved Over Time: Insights from Bibliometric and Text Mining Analyses

The work investigates the evolution of subjective well-being research based on bibliometric analysis and text mining techniques. It provides a comprehensive overview of the publications from 1966 to 2022 inclusive. 12,376 publications were downloaded from the Scopus database. The paper affords information regarding the evolution of the field in terms of identifying key publications and authors as well as how certain topics have evolved over time. Using topic modeling and text analysis techniques, the main research topics are identified. The analysis, which highlights a rapid growth in publications observed since 2000, demonstrates how the concept of well-being from a subjective point of view is widely studied by researchers in various fields. Moreover, if before this concept was mainly analyzed in the psychological field, nowadays there are journals that devote more space to these issues in terms of individual happiness and social issues.