Research Trends in Motivation and Weight Loss: A Bibliometric-Based Review

Obesity is a complex disease that, like COVID-19, has reached pandemic proportions. Consequently, it has become a rapidly growing scientific field, represented by an extensive body of research publications. Therefore, the aim of this study was to present the research trends in the scientific literature on motivation and weight loss. Because traditional knowledge synthesis approaches are not appropriate for analyzing large corpora of research evidence, we utilized a novel knowledge synthesis approach called synthetic knowledge synthesis (SKS) to generate new holistic insights into obesity research focusing on motivation. SKS is a triangulation of bibliometric analysis, bibliometric mapping, and content analysis. Using it, we analyzed the corpus of publications retrieved from the Scopus database, using the search string TITLE-ABS-KEY((obesity or overweight) and “weight loss” and motiv*) in titles, keywords, and abstracts, without any additional inclusion or exclusion criteria. The search resulted in a corpus of 2301 publications. The United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Australia were the most productive countries. Four themes emerged, namely, weight loss and weight-loss maintenance through motivational interventions, lifestyle changes supported by smart ICT, maintaining sustainable weight with a healthier lifestyle, and weight management on the level of primary healthcare and bariatric surgery. Further, we established that the volume of research literature is growing, as is the scope of the research. However, we observed a regional concentration of research and its funding in developed countries and almost nonexistent research cooperation between developed and less-developed countries.