Green Supply Chain Management in Retail: Intellectual Structure, Research Clusters, and Future Directions

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has become increasingly important in the retail industry as sustainability challenges extend across sourcing, logistics, packaging, distribution, e-commerce, and product returns. This study maps the intellectual structure, research clusters, and emerging directions of GSCM research in the retail context using bibliometric and science-mapping approaches. Bibliographic data were retrieved from Scopus for the period 2021–2026. Following database filtering and metadata cleaning, 147 journal articles were analyzed using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer. The results show an annual publication growth rate of 25.39%, involving 538 authors across 90 publication sources, with 26.53% international co-authorship. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies three major research clusters: Green Supply Chain Operations and Performance, Environmental Assessment and Circular Resource Management, and Sustainable Retail Transformation and Innovation. Temporal overlay analysis indicates a shift from predominantly environmental-impact assessment, life-cycle analysis, food waste, and packaging toward logistics, e-commerce, mitigation, economic considerations, and implementation-oriented sustainability. The findings suggest that retail GSCM research is evolving toward more integrated approaches that connect environmental measurement with operational decision-making, circularity, digital retailing, and economic performance. The study provides a retail-specific knowledge map and identifies directions for future research on sustainable retail supply chains.