Perspectives on Smart Villages from a Bibliometric Approach

Abstract

We are going through a period in which the concept of the smart village (SV) is a novelty for the management of a community, and the new smart economy of the village is based on the power of community support. Appropriately, the development of a SV is related to a family’s participation in the motivation and access to education, the increase in knowledge of information technology, information and communications technology (ICT) literacy, and also in the creation of facilities for research and development (R&D). The partnership between the public administration, the private sector, and the community heads will lead to a smart economy within the village. At the same time, the intervention of the food system to support climate change can be supported by intelligent agriculture. The SV has a strong social significance; research in the field can be multidisciplinary, including human nutrition, climate change, and community education. This paper aims to X-ray the research areas of the SV from a multidisciplinary sense, in support of the partnership with the community, and to identify the main directions of strategic development. In total, 368 pieces of research on SVs from the last ten years were analyzed through bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software, doubled by the co-occurrence of keywords and the bibliometric combination of documents, followed by a systematic review of the literature. The research undertaken was intended to contribute to the development of research for SVs, with the analysis of identified clusters. The results obtained will have a special contribution at the SV level through strategic and research proposals and suggest that the most important strategic and research directions for SVs focus on community education, its satiety, as well as several environmental and social changes generated by SVs.

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“…It includes the general appearance of the locality, the quality of life, food, environment and services, the existence of high-speed internet and the digital skills of local people, the use of renewable energy sources and innovative technologies, local governance, etc. The results obtained are in line with those presented by Rahoveanu et al, 2022, who show that the use of the internet is essential to halt rural decline, the adoption of different types of renewable energy leads to energy independence of communities, and the multidisciplinary SV concept with all its aspects facilitates the development of rural areas [17], adding value to ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable communities. In this context, rural tourism and agritourism represent a "smart" opportunity for the sustainability of the rural environment in mountain areas, being considered a "smart" tool at the disposal of local communities [74].…”

“…The SV concept is multidisciplinary in nature and has grown as an area of interest in international research in recent years [17]. The smart villages model includes, but is not limited to, the following areas: health, education, economy, environment, sustainable development, digital transformation, renewable energy, healthy food, awareness, and civic engagement [18].…”

“…In 2019, only 59% of rural households had access to broadband internet (compared to 87% of EU households). The share of digital literacy among the EU rural population was 48% in 2019 [17].…”

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“…And it is increasingly accepted by scholars to consider rural, agricultural, and farmer as complex adaptive systems for integrative research, and the analysis of the coupling and coordination relationship among the three is becoming an emerging hot spot. However, as emergencies (rural digitization and smart countryside) and new perspectives (rural, agricultural, farmer integration), they are still in the infancy of research (Rahoveanu et al, 2022; with evident gaps:…”

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“…However, it necessitates more tailored tools and instruments, both at the EU level and within national/regional contexts. Regional and local governments also have a crucial role to play in this process [63].…”