Blockchain technology in the smart city: a bibliometric review

Blockchain can function as a foundational technology with numerous applications in smart cities. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it provides a detailed overview of the extant literature on blockchain applications in smart cities; second, it reveals the trends and suggests future research directions for scholars who wish to contribute to this rapidly growing field. We conducted a bibliometric review using a keyword co-occurrence network and article co-citation analysis. The analysis includes the assessment of 148 articles published between 2016 and 2020 in 76 academic journals. The review results demonstrate that the number of articles devoted to the study of blockchain applications and smart cities has increased exponentially in recent years. More importantly, the research identifies some of the most influential studies in this area. The paper discusses trends and highlights the challenges related to the deployment of blockchain in smart cities. To the authors’ best knowledge, this represents the first study to review the literature from leading journals on blockchain applications in smart cities using bibliometric techniques. © 2021, The Author(s).