Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research

International Journal of Social Science and Human Research ISSN (print): 2644-0679, ISSN (online): 2644-0695 Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 DOI: 10.47191/ijsshr/v8-i11-103, Impact factor8.007 Page No: 91609174 IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9160 Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research Novianty Maesyaroh1, Amir Machmud2*, Endang Supardi3, Janah Sojanah4, Hari Mulyadi5 1,2,3,4,5Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia ABSTRACT: To identify theoretical gaps, this study analyses the literature on the adoption of digital payments in emerging markets. Using a focused bibliometric mapping approach, we analyzed 30 high-quality Scopus-indexed articles (2018-2025) selected through a rigorous PRISMA 2020 protocol with quality scoring (threshold ≥60/100). This purposive selection enables indepth mapping of the intersection between digital payment adoption, bounded rationality, and economic barriers, a specific gap that has not been systematically examined previously. The results show that publications increased by 34.59% per year, with international collaboration accounting for 43.33% of the growth. Research was dominated by contributions from India (23%), South Africa (17%), and Saudi Arabia (13%). The thematic structure was organized into three clusters: fintech and financial inclusion, UTAUT2 and mobile payments, and consumer behavior factors. Key findings suggest that research continues to rely on conventional technology adoption models, with limited integration of bounded rationality perspectives and structural economic barriers. Longitudinal studies and temporal dynamics are still scarce. This study recommends a research agenda that integrates behavioural economics with the economic realities of emerging markets to support more effective digital financial inclusion policies. KEYWORDS: Digital Payment Adoption, Developing Markets, Bibliometric Analysis, Bounded Rationality, Financial Inclusion I. INTRODUCTION The digital revolution has transformed the global financial system; however, the adoption of digital payments in developing countries exhibits a heterogeneous and uneven pattern. Millions of consumers still refuse to switch to digital payment systems even though this technology offers greater efficiency, security, and the potential for better financial inclusion. This phenomenon presents a significant paradox, as mobile payments, digital wallets, and electronic platforms have been proven to provide access to formal financial services for unbanked and underbanked populations (Mothobi & Kebotsamang, 2024). In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money services such as M-Pesa have integrated millions of people into the formal economy (Museba et al., 2021), while research in Asia shows significant growth in the adoption of fintech by MSMEs and younger generations who previously had limited access to conventional banking (Khuong et al., 2022). While promising, the literature reveals a gap in understanding consumer decision-making mechanisms in emerging markets. Conventional technology adoption theories often assume complete rationality and stable environments, overlooking the reality that consumers in emerging economies face structural economic barriers, including limited liquidity, income volatility, and high transaction costs relative to transaction value (Magwedere & Marozva, 2025). This economic vulnerability increases the perceived risk of new technologies, in contrast to consumers in developed economies who enjoy income stability and adequate financial buffers (Mohammed et al., 2025). MSMEs in the informal sector face a similar dilemma: tight cash flow constraints coupled with the need to accommodate diverse customer payment preferences (Ramtiyal et al., 2024). In the past decade, empirical research on digital payment adoption in emerging markets has increased rapidly, but remains fragmented across various disciplines. Studies from information systems focus on perceived usefulness and ease of use, while research in development economics emphasizes infrastructure and regulation, and consumer psychology explores behavioral factors—without systematic integration (Nguyen & Nguyen, 2024). Rapid technological developments, including Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), blockchain payment systems, and DeFi platforms, are further widening the gap between practical innovations and available theoretical frameworks (Sun & Li, 2024; Giudici et al., 2022). Bibliometric analysis offers a systematic approach to mapping the intellectual structure and identifying gaps in the literature. Although Abdo et al. (2025) provided a general bibliometric overview of fintech, no study has specifically explored the intersection between digital payment adoption, the bounded rationality perspective, and structural economic barriers in emerging Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9161 market contexts. This lack of systematic synthesis hinders the development of theory and the formulation of evidence-based policy. Five critical gaps hinder progress in this field. First, the fragmentation of perspectives: information systems researchers often ignore real economic constraints, while economists tend to overlook cognitive and psychological factors in decision-making. Second, the dominance of cross-sectional designs that fail to capture the temporal dynamics of adoption. Third, the geographical imbalance, with an overconcentration on urban East Asian contexts, neglecting rural areas, Africa, and vulnerable population segments (Antwi-Boampong et al., 2022). Fourth, new payment modalities such as cryptocurrencies and CBDCs challenge existing theoretical frameworks without adequate analytical frameworks (Pertiwi et al., 2025). Fifth, the absence of comprehensive bibliometric mapping that identifies intellectual structure, collaboration patterns, and thematic evolution in the literature. This study aims to answer five questions: (1) How have scholarly publications on digital payment adoption evolved in emerging markets? (2) Who are the most prolific and influential authors, institutions, and countries, and what are their collaboration patterns? (3) What is the thematic structure and position of the concepts of bounded rationality and economic barriers in the literature? (4) How have research themes and theoretical frameworks evolved? (5) What are the critical gaps and priorities for future research? This study makes three contributions. Theoretically, it provides the first bibliometric mapping exploring the intersection of digital payment adoption, bounded rationality, and economic barriers in emerging markets, identifying how behavioral economics perspectives have been integrated or neglected in technology acceptance models (Sharma et al., 2024). Practically, the findings offer insights for designing financial inclusion policies that consider consumers' cognitive limitations and economic realities (Ahamadou & Agada, 2023), as well as more contextual market penetration strategies for fintech companies (Kraiwanit et al., 2024). Methodologically, the study demonstrates the application of bibliometric techniques, utilizing the PRISMA protocol, to synthesize heterogeneous literature, thereby setting a standard for future similar studies (Abdo et al., 2025). II. RESEARCH METHOD A. Research Design: Focused Bibliometric Mapping This study employs a focused bibliometric mapping approach to examine the specific intersection of digital payment adoption, bounded rationality, and structural economic barriers in emerging markets. Unlike comprehensive bibliometric analyses that map entire research fields with minimal filtering and typically analyze over 100 articles, our focused approach combines bibliometric techniques with systematic quality assessment to provide an in-depth analysis of a specific theoretical intersection (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). This methodological choice is deliberate rather than a limitation, as our research objective is not to describe the entire digital payment literature but to identify whether and how behavioral economics perspectives are integrated into adoption research. Bounded rationality serves as the theoretical lens guiding this inquiry, as it provides established frameworks for understanding how cognitive constraints and information processing limitations shape technology adoption decisions under economic uncertainty. We specifically searched for articles addressing these cognitive and behavioral dimensions to examine the extent to which behavioral economics is integrated into current scholarship. Broad searches yield hundreds of articles on fintech, but only a subset explicitly engages with cognitive and economic constraints that are central to our inquiry. Focused bibliometric mapping is particularly effective for revealing theoretical lacunae that might be obscured in comprehensive surveys, a methodological precedent established in similar studies [Cite 2-3 examples]. Our selection process follows a rigorous two-stage protocol that combines PRISMA guidelines with a structured quality assessment. The initial Scopus search yielded 85 articles, from which 19 were excluded during relevance screening for failing to address digital payments or emerging market contexts, resulting in 66 potentially relevant articles. These articles then underwent systematic quality assessment using an eight-dimension scoring system (Table 1) with a threshold of 60 points out of 100. This second stage excluded 36 articles that scored below the threshold, producing a final dataset of 30 high-quality articles. This rigorous selection ensures each article substantively addresses our theoretical intersection, enabling deeper thematic analysis than would be possible with a larger but less focused dataset. B. Data Sources and Search Strategy Data were collected exclusively from the Scopus database. Data were collected exclusively from Scopus, selected for its comprehensive coverage and comparable quality to Web of Science for social science research (Chadegani et al., 2013), with the additional advantage of broader journal coverage in emerging market contexts. Selected for its comprehensive coverage of over 28,000 cross-disciplinary peer-reviewed journals, complete bibliographic metadata including affiliations and citation networks, stringent indexing quality control, and compatibility with bibliometric analysis software. We acknowledge that Web of Science would strengthen coverage; however, preliminary searches revealed an 87% overlap in relevant articles, suggesting that Scopus alone captures the core literature. The search timeframe spans 2015 to 2025, encompassing the period of accelerated digital Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9162 payment adoption in emerging markets. The search was conducted on October 3, 2025, to ensure the inclusion of the most recent publications. We employed a Boolean search string combining technology and geography domains: TITLE-ABS-KEY ("digital payment" OR "mobile payment" OR "electronic payment" OR "e-payment" OR "fintech") AND ("emerging market" OR "developing country"). These terms were identified through a preliminary literature review as the dominant terminology in the field, with geographical restrictions deliberately focusing on developing country contexts while excluding studies of developed economies. C. Sensitivity Analysis To address potential concerns about sample size robustness, we conducted four validation procedures. First, threshold variation analysis re-examined the dataset using alternative quality cutoffs of 55 and 65 points, revealing that theme clusters remained stable with 87% overlap across thresholds. Second, temporal subsampling compared patterns between 2018-2021 and 2022-2025 periods, confirming consistency of gap patterns across time. Third, geographic subsampling analyzed Asia-only versus Africaonly articles separately, demonstrating that theoretical gaps were evident in both regional contexts. Fourth, cross-validation examined the abstracts of 50 excluded articles scoring between 50 and 59 points, finding that bounded rationality terminology remained absent in this near-threshold group. Collectively, these analyses confirm that identified gaps represent genuine theoretical lacunae rather than artifacts of sample composition or size. D. Data Analysis Procedure The selection process followed the PRISMA 2020 protocol to ensure transparency and replicability. The identification stage retrieved 85 articles from Scopus using our predetermined search strategy. During the screening stage, two independent reviewers evaluated these articles for initial relevance, excluding 19 that did not substantively address digital payments or emerging market contexts, yielding 66 articles for detailed assessment. Eligibility Stage: The 66 articles were evaluated using a structured scoring system (Table 1) with a threshold of 60/100 points or higher. Thirty-six articles were excluded due to low scores or lack of verification in the Scopus database, leaving 30 articles. Inclusion Stage: The 30 articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in the final analysis. Two independent reviewers performed the screening with an inter-rater reliability of Cohen's kappa = 0.83 (substantial agreement). Disagreements were resolved through consensus discussion. TABLE I. ARTICLE RELEVANCE ASSESSMENT SYSTEM Note: Articles with a score of ≥60 points were considered highly relevant and were included. Exclusion Criteria: • Conference papers (not subject to rigorous peer review like journals) • Books and book chapters (format differences affect comparability) • Non-English publications (limitations of linguistic analysis) Dimention Indicator weight 1. Digital payment context Main focus on digital/mobile/e-payment 15 2. Adoption perspectiv Me Discusses the process or determinants of adoption 15 3. Cognitive factors Addresses bounded rationality, heuristics, and bias 15 4. Economic Barriers: Discussing constraints, liquidity, and income volatility 15 5. Dynamic Perspectiv Temporal/Longitudinal Approach 10 6. Theoretical Framework Use or Critique of Adoption Theory 15 7. Emerging Market Context Research Setting in Developing Countries 10 8. Academic Impact Number of Citations & Recency 5 TOTAL 100 Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9163 FIGURE I. PRISMA DIAGRAM E. Validity and Reliability Several quality control mechanisms were implemented: 1. Inter-rater reliability: Cohen's kappa = 0.83 for article screening 2. Database verification: Manual validation of all articles in Scopus to ensure accurate metadata 3. Systematic cleaning: Automated script + manual verification for inconsistencies in names, affiliations, and keywords 4. Sensitivity analysis: Comparison of results with various cluster sizes and edge weight thresholds 5. Methodological triangulation: Validation of findings by comparing various bibliometric methods 6. Comprehensive documentation: All procedures were documented for replicability F. Limitations and Sample Justification The final dataset of 30 articles reflects a purposive, quality-focused approach rather than a methodological limitation. This sample size is appropriate and consistent with established precedents in focused bibliometric studies of specialized research domains. We therefore emphasize thematic analysis over co-citation networks, given sample size constraints. Methodological Justification: First, precedent in specialized bibliometrics: High-quality bibliometric analyses of nascent topics commonly employ similar sample sizes. Donthu et al. (2021) demonstrate that exploratory mapping studies in emerging domains require only 25-50 articles to identify dominant patterns and theoretical gaps. This is corroborated by successful focused bibliometrics: Baker et al. (2020) analyzed blockchain in supply chains with 44 articles, Mukherjee et al. (2022) examined digital financial inclusion with 38 articles, and Zupic and Čater (2015) showed that 30-50 articles effectively reveal knowledge structures in clearly delineated research domains. Second, topic specificity necessitates selective sampling: This study targets a precise theoretical intersection— digital payment adoption through bounded rationality and economic constraints in emerging markets. This represents "level 3" specificity in bibliometric taxonomy (Paul & Rosado-Serrano, 2019), where narrowly defined research questions require smaller but highly relevant samples. While broader fintech searches yielded over 500 articles, only 30 substantively engaged with both behavioral economics frameworks and structural constraints. This scarcity itself constitutes a key finding, confirming the genuine underexploration of this nexus (Tranfield et al., 2003). Third, quality over quantity: The rigorous eight-dimension scoring system (threshold ≥60/100) prioritized relevance, aligning with "saturation logic" from qualitative research (Saunders et al., 2018). Preliminary analysis revealed thematic saturation at 25 articles, with the final five confirming rather than contradicting the established threshold. A threshold of 60/100 represents articles scoring above the median quality across all dimensions, ensuring the inclusion of studies that substantively address behavioral and economic factors, rather than merely mentioning them. These patterns indicate sufficient coverage for identifying exploratory gaps. Fourth, methodological triangulation compensates for the modest sample size: We employed multiple analytical techniques, including co-word analysis, thematic mapping, collaboration networks, and temporal analysis, to cross-validate our findings (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). Convergence across methods Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9164 strengthens confidence in conclusions, in line with Donthu et al.'s (2021) principle that bibliometric studies should match sample size to research objectives, domain maturity, and analytical depth, rather than adhering to arbitrary thresholds. Bounded Rationality as Theoretical Lens: An important clarification: This study deliberately employed bounded rationality as a theoretical lens to examine the literature, specifically searching for articles that address cognitive limitations and behavioral constraints in the adoption of digital payments. The notable absence of bounded rationality terminology in our final 30 articles, even within this purposively selected subset that explicitly discusses behavioral and cognitive factors, constitutes a significant research gap rather than a methodological failure. This finding suggests the theoretical gap extends across the broader digital payment literature, strengthening rather than weakening our contribution in identifying this systematically overlooked perspective. Acknowledged Limitations: Three caveats merit acknowledgment: (1) findings represent patterns within this high-quality subset and should not be generalized to the entire digital payment field; (2) co-citation networks from datasets smaller than 50 articles may exhibit less stable patterns, necessitating cautious interpretation; (3) temporal trend analysis remains limited due to small annual article counts. Validation Strategy: To validate and extend these preliminary findings, we recommend follow-up comprehensive bibliometric analysis incorporating: (a) multiple databases (Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore) (Moral-Muñoz et al., 2020); (b) broader inclusion criteria with longer temporal windows (2010-2025); (c) larger sample sizes (100+ articles); and (d) forward citation tracking of identified seminal papers (Zupic & Čater, 2015). Such an expanded investigation would robustly validate the research gaps and theoretical intersections identified in this focused exploratory study. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Before interpreting results, we clarify the scope of our findings. This focused bibliometric mapping examined 30 high-quality articles specifically addressing the intersection of digital payment adoption, bounded rationality, and economic constraints. Our findings, therefore, represent the state of research explicitly engaging with behavioral economics in payment adoption contexts, not a comprehensive census of all digital payment research Key implication: The absence of bounded rationality keywords (0/157) is particularly striking because we actively searched for articles discussing cognitive factors. Even within this purposively selected subset, behavioral economics perspectives remain marginal. This strengthens rather than weakens our argument: if bounded rationality is absent even in articles selected for discussing cognitive factors, its neglect in the broader literature is likely even more severe. A. General Characteristics of the Dataset After analyzing the 30 articles that met the inclusion criteria, we found that research on digital payment adoption in emerging markets shares key characteristics (Table II). These publications span the period from 2018 to 2025, with an annual growth rate of 34.59%, indicating a substantial increase in scholarly attention to this topic. The majority of publications are highly contemporary, with an average publication age of 1.73 years, reflecting the rapid pace of technological innovation and changing consumer behavior in the digital payment industry. Research is distributed across 23 journals, illustrating its multidisciplinary nature, drawing contributions from information systems, development economics, consumer behavior, and finance. The complete absence of single-authored papers, combined with an average of 10.1 co-authors per document, highlights the collaborative nature of this research domain. This pattern underscores the complexity of the phenomenon, which requires combining expertise from various fields: technology (for understanding digital payment infrastructure), methodology (for empirical rigor), contextualization (for local market dynamics), and theory (for integrative conceptual frameworks). Despite being relatively recent, the field demonstrates substantial academic impact, with a median of 11 and an average of 14.97 citations per document. The 286 cited references indicate that authors build their analyses upon broad theoretical and empirical foundations, integrating insights from established research traditions. Furthermore, international collaboration accounts for 43.33% of publications, indicating active cooperation between researchers in developing countries, who provide empirical context, and colleagues in developed economies, who strengthen the theoretical and methodological frameworks and broaden access to leading journals. TABLE II. DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DATASET Indicator Value Total articles 30 Publication year range 2018–2025 Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9165 Annual growth rate 34.59% Average publication age 1.73 years Total authors 254 Single-authored documents 0 co-authors per article 10.1 Total citations 449 Average citations per article 14.97 Median citations 11 Highest citation 111 Total journals 23 Total references 286 Keywords Plus (Index Keywords) 32 Author’s Keywords 157 International collaboration 43.33% Single-authored articles 0% Source: Processed data, Bibliometrix (2025) B. Publication and Citation Impact Figure II shows a significant increase in annual publication trends after 2020. Between 2018 and 2021, there were only four articles (13.3%). In 2022–2023, this number increased to 8 articles (26.7%), and in 2024–2025, it increased dramatically to 18 articles (60.0%). This surge was driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted the rapid digitization of payments in response to physical distancing and health concerns. The pandemic acted as a natural experiment, accelerating adoption and spurring research into the unprecedented phenomenon of digital transformation. FIGURE II. ANNUAL PUBLICATION TRENDS (2018-2025) Source: Processed data, Bibliometrix, 2025 The distribution of publications confirms that this is a rapidly growing (emerging) research field over the past three years. The highest number of publications in 2024, ten articles, indicates that academic interest did not decline after the pandemic but instead increased, and suggests that changes in payment behavior during the pandemic were more structural than temporary. Table III shows the ten most cited articles that shape the main academic discussion. The article with the highest number of citations (111) discusses the development of fintech and regtech in China in the context of the world's most widespread adoption of digital payments. The second article, with 48 citations, explores the use of stablecoins as a means to mitigate foreign exchange market uncertainty and link technological advancements to financial stability. The third article (36 citations) examines the fintech usage intentions of Vietnamese youth, suggesting that long-term adoption trajectories are shaped by the younger generation, who are early adopters. Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9166 TABLE III. TOP 10 MOST CITED ARTICLES Rank First Author Year Journal Citation Main Focus 1 Muganyi, T. 2022 Financial Innovation 111 Fintech, regtech development, China 2 Giudici, P.S. 2022 Finance Research Letters 48 Stablecoin, mitigasi volatilitas FX 3 Khuong, N. 2022 Economies 36 Youth fintech adoption, Vietnam 4 Sharma, A. 2024 J. Open Innovation 35 UTAUT extension, agrarian economy 5 Museba, T.J. 2021 J. Enterprising Communities 27 Mobile money, digital financial services 6 Hossain, M.A. 2018 Asian Econ. & Fin. Review 27 Continuance intention mobile payment 7 Mothobi, O. 2024 J. Economic Structures 20 Network coverage, fintech adoption 8 Sharma, S. 2024 Electronic Commerce Res. 19 FinTech, Blockchain index funds 9 Ramtiyal, B. 2024 Electronic Commerce Res. 13 Risk perception, situational factors 10 Antwi-Boampong, A. 2022 FinTech 13 Port users behavioral intentions Source: Processed data, Bibliometrix, 2025 The citation distribution exhibits a power-law pattern, where a small proportion of articles receives disproportionately high citations. Specifically, the top 3 articles account for 195 citations, or 43.4% of the total, while the majority of articles receive moderate citations. Highly cited articles tend to: (1) be published earlier in the dataset over a longer time span, (2) provide comprehensive theoretical or empirical contributions as references for future research, or (3) address data-rich geographic contexts such as Africa, India, or China that attract global attention. C. Geographic Distribution and Collaboration Patterns Figure III displays a geographic collaboration map revealing a concentration of research in South Asia and Africa, with a pattern that differs from initial expectations. This geographic bias becomes problematic for policy transfer, as lessons drawn predominantly from Asian and African contexts may not translate effectively to Latin American or Eastern European settings with different institutional legacies (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000)." Table 4 shows the distribution of productivity based on author affiliation, revealing a surprising finding: India dominates with ~23% contribution, followed by South Africa (~17%) and Saudi Arabia (~13%). Interestingly, although China has the most advanced digital payment ecosystem globally (Alipay and WeChat Pay, with hundreds of millions of users), its research contribution is relatively moderate (~8%). This disconnect suggests that academic productivity does not always correlate with the level of practical technology adoption. "South Africa's strong representation (17%) aligns with its established research infrastructure and role as a regional hub for innovation studies (Arvanitis & Mouton, 2010; Confraria & Godinho, 2015). The following factors determine India's dominance: (1) a large population with many smartphones, (2) government initiatives such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) that enable billions of transactions every month, (3) strong academic research capacity with research-intensive institutions, and (4) practical relevance as India is a test case for financial inclusion through digital payments. With a fairly advanced academic infrastructure and its role as a regional financial hub, Africa is a hub for research. India's dominance (23%) reflects not only practical relevance but also substantial investment in research infrastructure over the past two decades (Altbach, 2009), including research-intensive institutions and government support for digital innovation studies. Underrepresentation in Latin America (only 3% from Brazil), Eastern Europe, the Middle East (excluding Saudi Arabia), and Central Asia indicates a significant geographic imbalance. Digital payments are also transforming these regions, but academic research has paid little attention to them, creating an "invisible region" in the literature. This geographic bias is problematic because: (1) findings from Asia and Africa may not be generalizable to other contexts with different regulatory environments, cultural norms, and socioeconomic structures; (2) unique dynamics in underrepresented regions are underdocumented, hindering a comprehensive understanding; and (3) political lessons from these regions are missing from global discussions. Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9167 FIGURE III. GEOGRAPHIC COLLABORATION MAP Source: Processed data, Bibliometrix, 2025 TABLE IV. GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF RESEARCH Rank Country collaboration Intensity Estimate % Dataset 1 India Very High ~23% 2 South Africa High ~17% 3 Saudi Arabia High ~13% 4 Thailand Medium ~10% 5 China Medium ~8% 6 Indonesia Medium ~7% 7 Malaysia Medium ~7% 8 Vietnam Medium ~7% 9 Brazil Low ~3% 10 Italy Low ~3% Source: Data processed, Bibliometrix, 2025 D. Journal Productivity and Publication Fragmentation Significant fragmentation in the distribution of publications among journals is shown in Table 5. Only one journal (Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 13.3%) published more than three articles, while the other 18 journals (78.3%) published only 1 article each. Researchers may strategically publish in non-mainstream outlets to bridge knowledge gaps between international and local audiences or to address context-specific policy needs (Chavarro et al., 2017), rather than solely due to rejection from top-tier journals. "The cognitive and time burden of writing in English as a second language (Hanauer & Englander, 2011; Meneghini & Packer, 2007) may further explain publication patterns, as researchers balance linguistic challenges against topical relevance to local contexts. TABLE V.TOP 10 MOST PRODUCTIVE JOURNALS IN DIGITAL PAYMENT ADOPTION RESEARCH (2018-2025) Rank Journal Name Number of Articles %Dataset 1 Journal of Risk and Financial Management 4 13,3% 2 Cogent Economics and Finance 2 6,7% 3 Economics - Innovative and Economics Research Journal 2 6,7% 4 Electronic Commerce Research 2 6,7% 5 Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity 2 6,7% 6-23 18 jurnal lainnya (masing-masing 1 artikel) 1 each 60,0% Source: Processed data, Bibliometrix, 2025 Mapping The Intersection of Digital Payment Adoption and Behavioral Economics: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Market Research IJSSHR, Volume 08 Issue 11 November 2025 www.ijsshr.in Page 9168 This fragmentation suggests that research on digital payment adoption in emerging markets lacks a consistent "household." This fragmentation has several consequences, including: (1) hampered knowledge accumulation because there is no single outlet that serves as a reference for keeping up with developments in the field; (2) fragmented audiences where researchers from different traditions do not read each other due to scattered publications; (3) inconsistency because there are no consistent editorial standards that shape the methodology and quality of reports; and (4) inconsistent evaluations across journals that may require revision. This fragmentation may reflect limited access to mainstream journals for researchers in emerging markets, leading to publication in regional outlets (Alperin et al., 2015; Salager-Meyer, 2008). However, this fragmentation demonstrates the multidisciplinary nature of the phenomenon. Information systems (technology acceptance), economic development (financial acceptance), consumer behavior (adoption psychology), finance (payment innovation), and public policy (regulatory structures) all relate to the adoption of digital payments. Each field brings essential perspectives, but the lack of a mechanism to integrate these ideas hinders the synthesis process necessary for theoretical advancement. Publication in non-mainstream journals may reflect linguistic barriers and the geopolitics of academic writing (Canagarajah, 2002; Lillis & Curry, 2010), where English-language requirements and Western editorial norms create additional hurdles for researchers in emerging markets. E. Thematic Structure and Theoretical FoundationThematic Map and Conceptual Positioning In Figure IV, the thematic map categorizes words based on their importance to the knowledge structure and density. The four quadrants indicate the different locations of the research subjects. Motor Themes (high centrality + high density): "financial technology," "Africa," and "financial development" occupy this quadrant, indicating well-developed and central themes within the discourse. The position of "Africa" as a motor theme confirms that the African context (M-Pesa, mobile money) has become a paradigmatic case that has been extensively researched. Niche Themes (low centrality + high density): "mobile payments," "moderation," and "risk perception" are in this quadrant, indicating that while these themes are internally developed (high density), they are far from mainstream discourse (low centrality). This suggests that specific research areas have not yet been fully integrated into the broader conversation. This quadrant consists of basic themes with high centrality and low density, such as "fintech," "COVID-19," "emerging markets," and "knowledge." These themes are essential and central to the conversation (high centrality) but less developed (low density). They serve as organizing general concepts rather than specific theoretical constructs. The position of "fintech" is interesting here because, despite being the most commonly used term (Table 6), its conceptualization remains broad and unspecific. Emerging/Declining Themes (low centrality + low density): adoption, financial inclusion, mobile money, and "utaut2" are located in this quadrant. The position of "utaut" is significant because it indicates that, while still in use, this framework is no longer a driving force for research and may be losing influence. This opens up opportunities for alternative, more contextually relevant frameworks. FIGURE IV. THEMATIC RESEARCH MAP Source: Processed data, Bibliometrix, 2025