Systematic review and bibliometric insights into street vending: mapping scholarly contributions and emerging themes (2000–2025)

Abstract

This study aims to offer a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of global scientific literature on street vendors. Although there has been an increase in publications in the field of street vending and street entrepreneurship in recent years, this study attempts to assess publishing trends, patterns of scholarly collaboration, thematic focus areas and overall research impact, thereby conducting a literature review of key empirical studies to understand the definition, legality and challenges associated with street vending. This study seeks to create a robust conceptual and empirical framework to facilitate the progression of future research in this under-examined yet essential aspect of urban informal economies. To thoroughly examine this topic, this study uses the Bibliometric VOSviewer 1.6.20 and the biblioshiny software for a bibliometric analysis, using Elsevier-Scopus as the database covering literature of the past 25 years from 2000 to 2025. The results were represented and discussed with the following approaches: references (research paper), countries, keywords, authors and institutions, and the key findings were graphically represented. The findings underline the relevance of interdisciplinary approaches. The majority of contemporary research on street vendors and street entrepreneurs is rooted in public policy and urban planning, integrating bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review. This study demonstrates originality as it is one of the first studies to use a bibliometric analysis with a systematic approach to provide a detailed account of the state of the literature on street vendors and street entrepreneurs at a global level over more than 24 years. This paper contributed as a comprehensive global-level synthesis, identifying major conceptual shifts, dominant research clusters and emerging directions. This advancement would strengthen the originality claim.