Most entrepreneurship studies have an urban focus, and it is studied mainly from the perspective of opportunity exploitation. Rural entrepreneurship presents different characteristics, and it requires analysis from a resource-based view since this kind of entrepreneurial behavior takes place in rural communities under resource constraints. The sustainable livelihood perspective represents a relevant framework in rural entrepreneurship, considering resources and capacities to face poverty in rural areas. Therefore, this study presents a literature review to identify current and emerging issues in rural entrepreneurship from a sustainable livelihood framework. The literature review identifies that the main concepts involved in rural entrepreneurship and sustainable livelihood are women, poverty alleviation, youth, social entrepreneurship, and institutions. Likewise, social capital and human capital prevail as the most relevant capitals in the analyzed documents. The study offers research opportunities in emerging issues related to social entrepreneurship, governance and institutions, livelihood growth, and eco-entrepreneurship for extending the boundaries of rural entrepreneurship from the sustainable livelihood framework.

This study aims to present a bibliometric analysis and literature review and to identify publications, main topics, and trends in recent years about the sustainability of logistics operations in e-commerce environments. For this, we considered 99 documents from Scopus published in 2021 and 2022 that address logistics, e-commerce, and sustainability. The bibliometric analysis shows that authors from Italy and India stand out for generating the largest number of publications, and correspondingly, institutional affiliations from these countries present the largest scientific production. It is established that journals such as Sustainability, International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, and Sustainable Cities and Society lead both in the number of published articles and the number of articles with the highest citations. Within the main topics are the sustainability of e-commerce logistics, last-mile logistics and delivery logistics, urban and city logistics, environmental impact, urban transport, packing and packaging, traffic and congestion, supply chains, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, China and cross-border e-commerce, vehicle routing, optimization methods, and decision-making techniques in operations for cost and energy efficiency. Similarly, this study identifies the main research trends related to multiple dimensions of sustainability; technological developments including electric vehicles and specialized software; crowdshipping; operation modes such as collection and delivery points, parcel lockers, and micro-depots; and policymaking.

In recent years, the rise of e-commerce has prompted the emergence of electronic marketplaces, or e-marketplaces, which act as intermediaries in the buying and selling process, bringing together several vendors to offer a wide range of products and services to customers, generating modalities such as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-marketplaces. E-marketplaces offer advantages such as access to potential buyers, business and product visibility, the reduction of transaction costs, the comparison of offers and prices among competitors, and the ease of business internationalization. However, the success of e-marketplace business models depends on the sustainability of these platforms, which must involve different stakeholders in order to meet economic, environmental, and social objectives. Therefore, this study presents a bibliometric analysis and systematic review of e-marketplaces, open innovation, and sustainability for the last ten, five, and two years. The analysis includes the number, types, and subject areas of documents published each year, as well as considerations such as the most-cited publications and the leading authors, journals, countries, and institutional affiliations. The analysis also includes a study of the relevant concepts in the publications and their relationships, identifying the predominant topics related to e-marketplaces, open innovation, and sustainability. The results indicate a focus on subject areas such as social sciences, environmental sciences, energy, business, management, and accounting, which is consistent with the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability. The findings show that e-marketplaces, open innovation, and sustainability are closely related to concepts such as sustainable development, e-commerce, digital marketing, China (the leading country in terms of publications in all periods), logistics, supply chain management, big data, planning, and decision making. Future works should address traffic congestion and environmental impact, new delivery practices in last-mile logistics, and the motives for users’ engagement in e-marketplaces. Likewise, future research can be oriented toward sustainability dimensions and stakeholders’ integration through open innovation and toward the limitations of SMEs in order to access and benefit from digital platforms.

Studies related to sustainability have been performed extensively around the world to evaluate the environmental, economic, and social impact of practices that meet the current and future needs of society. Based on the Scopus database, this study presents a bibliometric analysis for the long, medium, and short term to represent the characteristics of publications related to sustainability, identify research trends and thematic areas with a promising future in research. The analysis covers the following topics: general statistical description, most addressed thematic areas in sustainability, the geographical distribution of sustainability publications, and most influential and cited journals, authors, and articles. The results show sustainability prevails in areas like Engineering, Energy, Environmental Science, and Business, Management, and Accounting, and the publication rate in this field has increased exponentially in the last 10 years. This study also shows that the most productive journals in sustainability research are Sustainability Switzerland and Journal of Cleaner Production, focusing on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary topics. Likewise, the critical issues of sustainability research are related to sustainable development, humans, environmental sustainability, climate change, decision-making, and environmental impact. As sustainability with open innovation represents a topic with an increasing number of publications, future research can be oriented toward this topic.