---
title: "Social capital research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “social capital” appeared in 1,319 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (490), management (356) and finance (129)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-capital
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-capital.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “social capital” appeared in 1,319 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (490), management (356) and finance (129). (as of 2026-11-03)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-03T18:03:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-05 to 2026-11-03
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “social capital”

Research on “social capital” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “social capital” appeared in 1,319 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (490), management (356) and finance (129).
- 185 of them were published in 2025, against 108 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Peking University (10), Renmin University of China (9) and Sapienza University of Rome (9).
- The journals publishing most of them were Finance research letters (20), World Development (14) and Journal of Business Research (12).
- The most-cited of them is “Identifying Digital Transformation Paths in the Business Model of SMEs during the COVID-19 Pandemic” (Journal of Open Innovation Technology Market and Complexity, 2020), with 702 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 41 | 49 | 40 | 40 | 64 | 46 | 46 | 55 | 69 | 40 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 33 | 38 | 35 | 46 | 37 | 36 | 32 | 34 | 33 | 32 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 4 | 6 | 7 | 16 | 10 | 13 | 11 | 14 | 32 | 16 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 5 | 5 | 4 | 9 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 15 | 11 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 10 | 4 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 6 | 4 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 6 | 10 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 5 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 1 | 8 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 6 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 6 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 10 | 3 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| All categories | 108 | 126 | 110 | 146 | 144 | 125 | 111 | 142 | 185 | 122 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 20 |
| 2 | [World Development](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/world-development.md) | 14 |
| 3 | [Journal of Business Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-research.md) | 12 |
| 4 | [Small Business Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/small-business-economics.md) | 12 |
| 5 | [Higher Education](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/higher-education.md) | 10 |
| 6 | [Economics Letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/economics-letters.md) | 10 |
| 7 | [International Journal of Educational Development](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-journal-of-educational-development.md) | 10 |
| 8 | [Land Use Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/land-use-policy.md) | 9 |
| 9 | [Economic Modelling](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/economic-modelling.md) | 9 |
| 10 | [The British Accounting Review](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/the-british-accounting-review.md) | 9 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 10 |
| 2 | [Renmin University of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/renmin-university-of-china.md) | 9 |
| 3 | [Sapienza University of Rome](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sapienza-university-of-rome.md) | 9 |
| 4 | [Nanjing University of Finance and Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nanjing-university-of-finance-and-economics.md) | 8 |
| 5 | [Sun Yat-sen University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sun-yat-sen-university.md) | 8 |
| 6 | [Macquarie University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/macquarie-university.md) | 7 |
| 7 | [Politecnico di Milano](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/politecnico-di-milano.md) | 7 |
| 8 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 7 |
| 9 | [Beijing Normal University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/beijing-normal-university.md) | 6 |
| 10 | Nanjing Agricultural University | 6 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 169 |
| 2 | United States | 97 |
| 3 | Italy | 74 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 63 |
| 5 | Australia | 53 |
| 6 | Germany | 36 |
| 7 | France | 25 |
| 8 | Spain | 22 |
| 9 | India | 16 |
| 10 | Hong Kong | 15 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [human capital](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/human-capital.md) | 59 |
| 2 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 43 |
| 3 | [trust](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/trust.md) | 36 |
| 4 | [social networks](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-networks.md) | 33 |
| 5 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 24 |
| 6 | [moderating effect](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/moderating-effect.md) | 20 |
| 7 | cultural capital | 16 |
| 8 | [innovation](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/innovation.md) | 16 |
| 9 | [small and medium-sized enterprises](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/small-and-medium-sized-enterprises.md) | 16 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 702 | 9.6 | [Identifying Digital Transformation Paths in the Business Model of SMEs during the COVID-19 Pandemic](https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc6040104) | [Journal of Open Innovation Technology Market and Complexity](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-open-innovation-technology-market-and-complexity.md) | 2020-10-03 | Anjar Priyono, Abdul Moin, Vera Nur Aini Oktaviani Putri |
| 2 | 522 | 5.8 | [Does social capital matter for supply chain resilience? The role of absorptive capacity and marketing-supply chain management alignment](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.05.006) | [Industrial Marketing Management](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/industrial-marketing-management.md) | 2019-05-18 | İsmail Gölgeci̇, Olli Kuivalainen |
| 3 | 454 | 4.4 | [The power of positivity? The influence of positive psychological capital language on crowdfunding performance](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.03.003) | [Journal of Business Venturing](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-business-venturing.md) | 2018-04-03 | Aaron H. Anglin, Jeremy Collin Short, Will Drover et al. |
| 4 | 410 | 3.6 | [Learn from the Past, Prepare for the Future: Impacts of Education and Experience on Disaster Preparedness in the Philippines and Thailand](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.02.016) | [World Development](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/world-development.md) | 2017-04-04 | Roman Hoffmann, Raya Muttarak |
| 5 | 403 | 3.7 | [A social capital approach to the development of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems: an explorative study](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9924-0) | [Small Business Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/small-business-economics.md) | 2017-08-24 | Christina Theodoraki, Karim Messeghem, Mark Rice |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “social capital”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-capital

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-social-capital,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “social capital”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/social-capital}},
  urldate = {2026-11-03},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).