The future of transport and stakeholders' engagement: a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature

Although the transport systems have improved in recent years, they are still leading to different issues for sustainability. Developing a sustainable future of transport becomes essential and since the future is characterized by various trajectories, there is a need for careful and detailed planning and management of alternative solutions. Among the case study on transport planning in the last decade, one of the most used approaches sees the involvement of different stakeholders who, through their "expertise" degree, propose guidelines and policies to be adopted in the present to prevent future disruptions. However, transport is a complex system, and interests and evaluation factors change over time; the development of new solutions is rising new challenges for the actors involved in the decision-making process. Moreover, there is not a univocal consensus on how stakeholders' involvement should be carried out, and such future challenges might affect their selection, the sample size, and the interpretation of their answers. For these reasons, the purpose of our study is to provide a review of the literature on stakeholders' involvement in transport decision-making processes, analyse the evolution over time and provide insights for the future. The analysis will be carried out by applying a quantitative analysis using the Bibliometrix R package, aimed to have a critical overview and identify the main temporal patterns and the potential future topics.