The Geography of Entrepreneurship: A Scientometric analysis from 1982 to 2019

This study is a first attempt to map the state of geography of entrepreneurship research, an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of geography and entrepreneurship. Over the past 38 years, the field has seen exponential growth in publications. We discuss leading contributors, research collaboration, theoretical underpinnings and research hotspots based on bibliometric methods. The study comprises 1835 articles indexed by Web of Science between 1982 and 2019. Utilizing Bibexcel, VOSviewer, CiteSpace and ArcGIS, this article reveals that: Western European countries play a leading role in the field of geography of entrepreneurship; Studies in this field is published in rather concentrated channels; Six scholarly tribes emerge in collaboration network and they focus on regional determinants and impact of entrepreneurship, evolution of regions, rural development and firm location choices; The field mainly build on four different intellectual schools: entrepreneurship and economics school, neoliberalism school, political and economic geography school and sociology school; Evolution of research topics in this field was also visualized. Research hotspots in different periods include the impact of entrepreneurship in regional development, macro-level policy for innovation, knowledge spillover, migration and rural development, evolution and entrepreneurial ecosystem.