Mapping the Time Use Research Field in the Context of Sustainability: Network Analysis and Scoping Review

Abstract

The field of time use research has witnessed a continuous growth in recent decades. Meanwhile, the sustainability discourse also began to incorporate the time use approach. However, there is minimal research about the underlying knowledge base of the time use field, which creates difficulty for sustainability time-use studies to position themselves, draw insights from other disciplines, or achieve a comprehensive understanding of how human time allocation informs sustainability concepts and methods. This thesis established the first attempt to map the field of time use research, with the combination of co-citation network analysis and qualitative scoping review. We also explored a new bibliometric method, termed as “content-similarity network analysis”. The triangulation allowed us to identify convergent themes, such as household economics and well-being, sexual division of labour and child care, consumer behaviour, as well as transportation, underpinning this inter- and multi-disciplinary field. After the content-similarity network being generated based on the abstracts, we were able to investigate the relationship between household energy use and time use. Further, we created a conceptual framework to describe how the time use research can help approach the sustainability issues. It is shown that time use data, complementary to monetary and biophysical data, has the potential to enrich the social and behavioral aspects of sustainability. Our results also suggest an under-representation of sustainability themes in the time use field. By reinforcing the importance of knowledge integration across disciplines, this thesis adds to the growing body of sustainability literature at the interface of ecological economics, well-being, consumer-lifestyle, and urban planning.