Energy poverty is one of the main challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Research on energy poverty is becoming a common focus of scholars in many areas. Bibliometrics can help researchers dig deep into the information of specific research fields from a quantitative perspective. In this study, we collected 1018 research papers in the field of energy poverty published in the period 1999–2019 from the Web of Science databases and conducted a bibliometric analysis on them. Cleaning and screening of sample papers, matrix construction, and visualization were performed using Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and HistCite, summarizing the internal and external characteristics of the papers. With regard to external characteristics, a total of 982 research institutions in 80 regions conducted research in this field. There is extensive cooperation between the countries, and the UK, the USA, Australia, and Italy play the most active role in the cooperation network. With regard to internal characteristics, we found the two most representative citation paths: one path starts from the concerns of energy-poor groups and stops at an ethical discussion on energy poverty; the second path is based on the existing technological path, continuously developing coping policies, evaluation methods, and a conceptual framework for dealing with energy poverty. Furthermore, through coupling analysis, we discovered four focuses of energy poverty research: improvement of definition, improvement of evaluation methods, effects of coping policy, and energy justice. Through a comprehensive analysis of existing papers, this paper reveals some limitations of previous studies and recommends some promising directions for future research on energy poverty.

Energy poverty has negative impacts on the residents’ life from various aspects. A comprehensive understanding of these impacts is the top priority in energy poverty governance. Previous qualitative studies have shown that energy poverty has the potential to negatively impact the individual development of residents through multiple pathways. However, few scholars have explored this issue from a quantitative perspective. To fill the gaps in existing research, this study aims to examine the impact of energy poverty on individual development and explore the serial mediating effects of learning behavior and health condition in the relationship. A total of 2289 valid samples are obtained from the dataset of Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS). SPSS 26.0 and PROCESS 3.5 are used to conduct serial mediating effects analysis. The results show that energy poverty can significantly negatively impact the individual development of residents. Learning behavior and health condition are found to independently or serially mediate the relationship between energy poverty and individual development. Health condition has the stronger mediating effect, whereas the mediating effect of learning behavior is weaker. This study may contribute to a better understanding of the consequences of energy poverty in government and academia.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly employed to support decision-making in the public sector, yet it exacerbates the “problem of many hands and eyes” in public accountability. Using a vignette experiment with a 3 × 3 factorial design, we investigated how the configuration of account givers and holders in AI accountability affects perceived legitimacy among citizens. Our findings indicate that human agents are perceived as more legitimate account holders than AI systems, where bureaucratic operators outperform technological developers. Additionally, citizens are perceived as more legitimate account holders than political leaders and experts. We also explored the interactive effects between account givers and holders. This study responds to calls for empirical evidence on AI accountability, expands the conceptual framework of accountability in the AI era, and highlights the crucial roles of bureaucrats and citizens.