A digital participation transformation in the chinese local government: A bibliometric analysis

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Abstract
As the wave of intelligent and digital technologies sweeps across the globe, the increasing integration of digital government modernization has made the digital transformation of local governments in China an important means of improving governance efficiency and achieving effective public participation.The digital governance of local governments in the Chinese has shown a development trend of perfect top-level design, gradual solidification of infrastructure, and accelerated migration of public services to digitalization, which lays the foundation for further research on its performance and impact.However, the government's digital transformation also faces challenges such as large technical investments, data security and privacy protection, and talent shortages. Against this backdrop, this study adopts a bibliometric analysis approach to explore and summarize research trends and developments in this field from 2020 to 2025. This study is based on 203 relevant literature entries from the Web of Science Core Collection, utilizing VOSviewer software for bibliometric analysis to reveal the research structure and evolutionary trajectory of this field. We found that the number of articles on this topic has been increasing year by year, indicating that research on digital government and digital participation is receiving increasing attention. Co-occurrence analysis of keywords revealed that terms such as “digital government,” “e-government,” “smart cities,” and “public participation” had high frequencies, reflecting research hotspots concentrated in areas such as digital governance frameworks, technological applications, and public online participation. However, we found that there has been limited in-depth research and analysis in this field. This paper visualizes research outcomes through an analysis of indicators such as publication trends, author collaboration, institutional collaboration networks, keyword co-occurrence, and cocitation analysis, revealing the development trajectory and future direction of research on the digital transformation of public participation in Chinese local governments. This not only contributes to theoretical research but also provides relevant insights for policymakers.

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