TRENDS IN EMOTIONAL LABOR RESEARCH: BIBLIOMETRIC AND SCIENCE MAPPING ANALYSIS

Emotional labor is about employees in the service sector involving their emotions while performing the service job as required. Emotions are also used for commercial purposes. The study analyzes data on emotional labor through bibliometric and science mapping methods. For the analyses, data between 1982 and 2024 are scanned in the Web of Science (WoS) database, and data for 2,925 documents are accessed. After loading the data, the VOSviewer program is utilized to analyze it for bibliometric and science mapping purposes. Subsequently, the investigation unveiles the foremost authors, countries, journals, institutions, and keywords in emotional labor research. This is followed by analyzing their co-authorship, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and keyword co-occurrence models. As a result, in emotional labor research, it is found that Alicia A. Grandey is the most productive and most cited author, the USA is the most productive country, Frontiers in Psychology is the most productive journal, and the most frequently encountered keywords are burnout, surface acting, job satisfaction, deep acting, and emotional exhaustion, respectively. The analysis findings reveal a collaborative nexus among authors, countries, and institutions, offering visual network maps and comprehensive insights into emotional labor's present status and trends within the scientific literature.


INTRODUCTION
Considering all the areas that make up today's economic structure, it is observed that the importance of the service sector is increasing.Developments in this field show significant changes depending on the effects of employee behavior on organizational outcomes-areas such as air transportation, tourism, health sector, fire brigade, and security sector.Emotional labor behaviors of employees are becoming increasingly important in many service sectors where communication and interaction are intense, including public spaces.Years ago, sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1983), who observed the emotional states of airline cabin crew in response to passengers' demands, introduced the concept of "emotional labor" by discussing the commercialization of emotions to conceptualize the emotional aspect of service work.In her study, Hochschild focuses on the behavior of employees in employeecustomer relations in commercial enterprises operating in the service sector, such as airlines.Emotional labor refers to the concerns about being customer-oriented due to the development of the service sector and the employees' involvement not only in their physical and mental labor but also in their emotions while performing the service job as required.Employers directly or indirectly demand that their employees use their emotions.Employee-customer communication, which arises from the requirements of many jobs in the service sector, requires employees to manage their emotions to show appropriate emotions in the work environment.Unlike displaying emotions in private life, managing emotions in the business environment affects corporate image and efficiency as it expresses the organization-customer relationship.For this reason, managing employees' emotions in the work environment takes place under the organization's control, depending on managerial decisions and regulations.Therefore, employees are not free to use their emotions in service delivery, but they do so subject to specific rules.At this point, organizations demand their employees to present their work with certain emotions during service delivery.As a result, employees re-evaluate, change, regulate and control their emotional states as required.This often results in the display of emotions that do not match the actual emotions felt.Today, emotional labor emerges as a subject of intense debate as emotional displays often do not coincide with the employee's real feelings to impress customers in return for a fee for organizational purposes.Therefore, parallel to these developments, the extent to which it has attracted attention from academic circles has become a subject that needs to be examined.The development of emotional labor in the literature, the level of interest in the concept, the topics it draws attention to, the concepts it is associated with, the analysis methods, and the intensity with which it is included in academic studies such as books, articles, and theses have revealed the need to examine numerically and statistically the intensity with which it is included in academic studies such as books, articles, and theses.This situation falls within the scope of bibliometrics, which examines the structure of the literature, its development, the relationships between the authors and their studies on the subject, etc., through the data obtained from studies conducted from the past to the present.Alan Pritchard introduced the concept of bibliometrics in 1969 to avoid conceptual confusion.He defines bibliometrics as shedding light on the nature and development of a discipline, its processes, and the future through the counting and analysis of written communication from various aspects (Pritchard, 1969, p. 349).He revealed that with this method, the titles, authors, cited references, and keywords of published documents such as articles and books can be determined.All kinds of data are examined statistically.This way, evaluating authors, countries, institutions, and international collaborations is possible.As a result of this evaluation, developing trends can be identified, points of focus can be defined, and focal points of future research can be predicted.One of the research approaches in this field is the bibliometric mapping method, also known as science mapping.This method is an application for visualizing, analyzing, and modeling scientific studies in various fields.It analyzes the conceptual, social, and intellectual structure of scientific research and visualizes the evolution, development, and dynamics of the research field (Gupta and Chakravarty, 2021).
Several package programs are used to analyze bibliometric data, visually presenting the social or intellectual structures of scientific research and the research field's evolution, development, and dynamics.In this study, the VOSviewer program developed by Van Eck and Waltman (2009) was used to analyze bibliometric data.
VOSviewer is an open-source, free software program.This bibliometric mapping program allows the creation of maps based on network, bibliographic and text data of studies in the literature, visualizing these maps and exploring various topics.Network mapping is readily used to analyze bibliometric data as a critical procedure for visualizing connections within a body of work.Every network contains two types of information: nodes and edges.Nodes include publications, journals, authors and keywords; Edges represent the relationships between pairs of nodes and the strength of these relationships (Van Eck & Waltman, 2014).Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Vizyoner Dergisi, Yıl: 2024, Cilt: 15, Sayı: 43, 1063-1081. ISSN: 1308-9552 Süleyman Demirel University Visionary Journal, Year: 2024, Volume: 15, No: 43, 1063-1081.This study aims to examine the studies on the concept of emotional labor from past to present through bibliometric data to map and interpret the structure of the literature, its development, the relationships between the authors and their works on the subject, and to give ideas to researchers for future research.It aims to shed light on future research by presenting the findings obtained from these analyses using quantitative data and numerical measurement indicators to the attention of researchers with a comprehensive perspective.

Emotional Labor
Although emotional labor dates back to Aristotle, the concept is mentioned in sociologist Arlie Hochschild's book "The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling", first published in 1983 (Micciche, 2020).Emotional labor is "the management of emotions to create a clearly observable facial and physical appearance that is sold for a fee and therefore has an exchange value" (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7).Her book defines two types of emotional labor: deep acting and surface acting.She states that the general framework of emotional labor requires the coordination of mind and emotion (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7).According to Steinberg and Figart (1999), emotional labor is also a relational aspect of the job rather than a task-based aspect.The examples given by Hochschild reveal the scope of emotional labor descriptively.Examples such as the hospital coordinator rallying the staff to achieve a common goal set by management, the judge has to remain impartial while examining evidence of a monstrous murder, and corporate employees having to manage their clients' concerns are some of Hochschild's good examples of identifying the scope of emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983).
Since Hochschild introduced the concept of emotional labor, many scientists and researchers from many fields have produced new definitions to help us better understand emotional labor.For example, the external display is taken one step further and defined as the employee's capacity to manage personal emotions, sense the emotions of others, and respond appropriately depending on the job (Mastracci et al., 2010, p. 125).In another definition, emotional labor is expressed as exhibiting the emotions the employee feels to the target audience with whom he/she communicates and transforming them into observable behaviors (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993, p. 89).Emotion regulation performance is also expressed as responding to work-based emotional needs to produce emotions towards another person and arouse emotions in that person to achieve organizational goals (Grandey et al., 2013, p. 18).
Emotional labor is a work-oriented requirement, meaning the employee can perform the job effectively.This concept includes managing the employee's emotional state to perform the job successfully, and the emotional state of the customer deals with.Employees instantly perform the following steps in the management process of this emotional state (Hsieh et al., 2019, p. 241).
• Feeling the emotional state of the person or customer he/she is dealing with, • The employee analyzes his/her emotional state, • Determining whether the emotional state of the person or customer dealing with needs to change (For example, calming down the customer who exhibits an aggressive attitude), • Deciding whether the employee will suppress his/her emotional state towards the person or customer he/she is dealing with (For example, the employee should suppress his/her fear in order to calm down the customer who exhibits an aggressive attitude), • Determining the emotional display that will get the desired reaction from the person or customer.

Emotional Labor Approaches
In the literature, many emotional labor approaches have been put forward on the emotions employees feel and the emotions expected from them by their organizations.The leading ones of these approaches are briefly summarized below.

Hochschild (1983) Approach
Hochschild used the concept of emotional labor to express the management of emotions to achieve observable facial and physical appearance.In her study, she observed the behaviour of flight attendants working in airline companies while working.As a result of the study, the interior design of the aircraft, the music played, and the food services provided.He concluded that the smiling behavior of cabin crew, like the services, also affects the passengers (Hochschild, 1983, p. 11).According to him, emotional labor is sold for wages and therefore has an exchange value (Hochschild, 1983, p. 7).According to this definition, emotional labor is the management of emotions by using facial and body movements to exhibit the desired behaviors within the framework of the rules set in a workplace for a fee.She scrutinized the emotional labor process through two distinct lenses: surface acting and deep acting, which are recognized as fundamental strategies across the board.(Chou et al., 2012).Surface acting behavior involves the employee expressing the emotions desired by the organization, unlike the emotions he feels, and displaying them in the display).Employees who exhibit this behavior play a role by wearing a mask to camouflage their real emotions (Zhang & Zhu, 2008;Yang & Guy, 2015).Deep role-playing means that the employee really feels and internalizes it, and it is possible to express deep acting behavior as a process in which the emotions and thoughts in the individual's inner world are controlled in order to comply with the determined rules of behavior (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002, p. 22).While there is an obligation in the first case, in the second case, it is a matter of displaying behavior that comes from within the employee.For this reason, deep-acting behavior significantly impacts the other party (Hochschild, 1983).

Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) Approach
Ashforth and Humprey (1993) put forward an approach by associating emotional labor with observable behaviors rather than managing emotions in Hochschild's approach (Grandey, 2000, p. 96).Emotional labor is the employee's effort to direct behavior that affects the perception during the interaction and communication process with the customer (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993, p. 90).As per their viewpoint, employees serving as the organization's ambassadors project its outward image, underscoring the significance of emotional labor within the service industry.In addition, they added the dimension of "sincere emotions" expressed as natural behavior to the surface and deep acting dimensions that Hochschild put forward regarding emotional labor (Asforth & Humphrey, 1993, p. 94).In this dimension, it is stated that the behavior exhibited, and the underlying emotions may arise from the emotions the employee feels without making any effort.Ashforth and Humprey (1993) focused on the part of the emotional labor process that affects the customer rather than the emotions that arise in the employee.For this reason, how the employee conveys their feelings to the other party during the emotional labor process affects the quality of the service (Ashforth & Humprey, 1993).

Morris and Feldman (1996) Approach
Emotional labor is the planning, control, and effort required to display the emotions desired by the organization in interpersonal affairs (Morris & Feldman, 1996, p. 987).They conceptualized emotional labor in a four-dimensional structure.These are the emotional dissonance that occurs due to the frequency of appropriate emotional displays, the attention given to the desired display rules, the diversity of emotions shown, and the employee not feeling the emotions expected to be displayed by the organization.Due to this four-dimensional structure, emotional labor has been examined in a more complex structure, generally as the employee's display of emotions expected by the organization during service delivery (Morris & Feldman, 1996, p. 987).According to this situation, four different assumptions have been put forward.
• Social environment shapes emotions, • Even in cases where there is harmony between the emotions desired to be displayed by the organization and the emotions of the employee, a small amount of effort is needed, • The display of personal emotions is similar to a marketed product with commercial value.In this case, the focus is not on emotional management but on exhibiting the behavior expected by the organization (Morris & Feldman, 1996, p. 988).
• There are rules regarding how and when emotions are displayed.Defined as display rules and how to express which emotions in which situations.They are defined as display rules and specify which emotions should be displayed and how in which situations (Morris & Feldman, 1996 p. 988).

Grandey (2000)
Approach Grandey (2000) examined and analyzed previous studies on emotional labor and presented a different approach.
The model he puts forward offers a guiding theoretical framework to examine emotional labor from previous perspectives, to make an integrative definition of emotional labor, and to understand emotional labor mechanisms that include individual differences such as emotional intelligence in emotion regulation and organizational factors such as control support (Grandey, 2000, p. 95).For this purpose, she brought a new perspective and included the "emotion regulation" approach to emotional labor (Grandey, 2000: 98).It is stated that employees can adjust the way they express their emotions within the framework of organizational rules determined by the emotion regulation approach (Grandey, 2000: 95).Accordingly, it is stated that it is a process that determines when, where and how employees should express their emotions (Gross, 1998, p. 275).According to Grandey, surface acting represents the control of behavior, while deep acting represents the control of feelings (Grandey, 2000).
It is suggested that there are four main factors that affect employees' emotional labor in the service sector: the content and style of communication, whether it is temporary or permanent, the employee's autonomy in the interaction process, and the complexity level of the interaction.(Grandey & Diamond, 2010).The distinctive feature of the model developed by Grandey, who defines emotional labor as the regulation of emotions and behaviors in line with organizational goals, is that it is a combination of previous approaches, and the concept of emotion regulation is included in the model.Emotion regulation is the ability of an employee to control their emotions in an interaction with a customer and to respond appropriately by maintaining emotional balance.

RESEARCH
The research employs bibliometric and science mapping analyses to explore emotional labor.It delves into the connections among scientific publications, research institutions, journals, countries, researchers, and keywords.Additionally, it aims to uncover emerging trends in emotional labor research, identify leading contributors in terms of keywords, countries, authors, and journals, and offer insights for future studies through co-authorship, cooccurrence, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analysis.The study addresses critical research questions concerning the performance analysis and scientific mapping of emotional labor literature or research publications to achieve these goals.
• To pinpoint the most prolific or impactful authors, institutions, countries, and journals in emotional labor research, • To scrutinize and illustrate the present state of emotional labor research through citation analysis, keyword cooccurrence, country co-authorship, institutional bibliographic coupling, and source co-citation patterns.

METHOD
The study aims to analyze and visually present the conceptual, social, or intellectual structures of "emotional labor" research and the research field's evolution, development, and dynamics.For this purpose, the bibliometric analysis method was chosen, which analyzes the relevant literature publications using metric data to understand the research fields, authors, institutions, and relationships between studies related to emotional labor.
There are many databases where data can be collected.Among these, the WoS database is a leading analytical information platform that includes many high-quality, peer-reviewed journals with international reach, conference proceedings, and many disciplines.This database, the world's most comprehensive source of academic information, allows searching multiple databases simultaneously from a single interface through the Web of Science Core Collection.In addition, the most crucial advantage of the WoS database is that it has transparent, accessible, organized, and consistent information (Zhao & Strotmann, 2015).This study analyses and visualizes the literature on emotional labor research.The study's basis relies on secondary data sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection database, obtained in text format.Analysis was conducted using the VOSviewer 1.6.20 package program.The study covers the data period from 1982 to 2024.
The data set was obtained from the WoS database on January 24, 2024.Accordingly, by selecting the title "All Fields", publications containing the phrase "Emotional Labor" were scanned at all times, and as a result, 2925 documents (articles, review articles, editorial materials, proceedings, etc.) were listed.There are no restrictions regarding the publication type and language of the documents.
Due to the export limit of 500 records at a time in the WoS database, the data is partitioned into six segments (1-500, 501-1000, 1001-1500, 1501-2000, 2001-2500, 2501-2925) in the "Tab Delimited File" format.Record and Cited References" was selected and transferred to a folder.Then, visual maps were created with all the exported Concepts such as clusters, elements, connections, number of connections, networks, connection strength and total connection strength are used in the study.The meanings of these concepts can be briefly summarized as follows.Items encompass publications, researchers, or terms.Connection denotes the link or association between two elements.Every link possesses a strength indicated by a positive numerical value, with a higher value indicating a stronger connection.A network refers to a collection of elements interconnected by various connections.A cluster comprises a group of elements depicted on a map, often identified by cluster numbers such as 1 and 2. In the visualization of a map, items with greater weights are displayed more prominently compared to those with lesser weights.Two standard weight features include the connection and total connection power features.The number of connections denotes how many links an element has with other elements.The combined strength of each element determines the Total Link Power (TLP) 's connection with others, reflecting the overall connection potency.
Limitations of the research: The use of all data from the Web of Science database constitutes the limitation of the study.

Analysis of Publication Outputs and Growth Trends
Figure 1.shows that emotional labor, as a research topic, has attracted the attention of researchers with 25 documents since 2005; this number increased to 100 in 2013, 150 in 2017, 323 in 2019, and peaked with 351 documents in 2021.Interest has been at its highest level in the last five years.It is anticipated that the number of records, which is 4 as of January 2024, will continue to increase with the work to be done throughout the year.In general, it is observed that publications on emotional labor literature increase every year.  2012016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003  2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1989

Most Productive and Highly Cited Author
It is stated that an author must write more than 10 articles on any subject to be considered a productive writer (Crane, 1969).In the analysis performed in the VOSviever program, "citation" was selected as the analysis type and "authors" as the analysis unit, the minimum number of documents for an author was selected as 1, and the minimum number of citations was selected as 1.This selection reflected the general situation on the network maps with maximum data.In this context, it was observed that 5203 of the 6367 authors who conducted the study met this threshold.Note: In the data set, the "grandey, aa" data written differently in the author's list were added to "grandey, alicia a." and the "diefendorff, jm" data were added to "diefendorf, james m." since the authors are the same people and included in Table 1. and Table 2. reflected.
When the data was analyzed using Grandey is the most productive and highly cited author in emotional labor research.

Analysis of Leading Countries
In the analysis made in the VOSviever program, the minimum number of documents for a country was selected as 1 by selecting "citation" as the analysis type and "countries" as the analysis unit; the minimum number of citations was chosen as 1.In this context, it was observed that 85 of the authors from 92 countries who conducted the study met this threshold.This selection reflected the general situation on the network maps with maximum data.The leader or most productive country in emotional labor is the United States of America (USA).After examining Table 3. and Figure 3., it is seen that the USA is the most productive country in the emotional labor literature with 1110 documents, 48694 citations, and 14360 TLS, and China follows it with 401 documents, 8536 citations, and 5533 TLS.While England secure the third with 262 documents, 6822 citations, and 1822 TLS, South Korea ranks fourth with 238 documents, 3776 citations, and 3267 TLS, and Australia ranks fifth with 201 documents, 6730 citations, and 3299 TLS.Türkiye ranks ninth in emotional labor research with 95 documents, 1001 citations and 1114 TLS, and it is seen that there is an increasing interest every day.

Analysis of Leading Sources
In the analysis performed in the VOSviever program, "citation" was selected as the analysis type, "source" was selected as the analysis unit, the minimum number of documents for a source was selected as 1, and the minimum number of citations was chosen as 1.In this context, it was observed that 973 of the 1248 sources who conducted the study met this threshold.

Analysis of Leading Organizations
In the analysis performed in the VOSviever program, "citation" was selected as the analysis type, "organization" was selected as the analysis unit, the minimum number of documents of an institution was selected as 1, and the minimum number of citations was selected as 1.In this context, it was observed that 1901 out of 2308 institutions working on this threshold met.According to Table 5. and Figure 5., Pennsylvania State University is the leading institution with 51 documents, 5674 citations, and 5782 TLS.It is followed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with 32 documents, 3254 citations, and 1559 TLS.Hong Kong Polytechnic University ranks third with 31 documents, 1676 citations, and 888 TLS, while the University of Utah ranks fourth with 30 documents, 265 citations, 396 TLS, and Purdue University ranks fifth with 27 documents, 1172 citations, and 1037 TLS.

Examining Country Co-authorship Patterns
The relationship between two authors can be gauged by the quantity of jointly authored documents, offering insight into scientific collaboration among authors, organizations, and countries (Van Eck & Waltman, 2014).Analyzing co-authorship by countries elucidates the level of communication and collaboration among the leading or most productive nations in emotional labor literature.Figure 6 depicts the co-authorship analysis among countries.When at least 1 publication and 1 citation criteria were selected to determine the most connected and collaborative countries for creating a visual network map, 85 out of 92 countries met the criteria.According to Figure 6., the analysis revealed that the USA focuses most on connection and cooperation in crosscountry emotional labor research.It is seen that the USA, which works with other countries the most on connection and cooperation, has 335 TLS.The USA has strong ties with China, the UK and Australia.The connection strength between the USA and China is 70, and the connection strength between the USA and the UK and Australia is 27.Additionally, the United States maintains significant relationships with Canada, South Korea, Germany, Singapore, Netherlands, Taiwan, and various other nations.The Overlay Visualization illustrates countries' contributions to emotional labor research based on the year of publication.Accordingly, it is seen that Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Algeria, Georgia, and Qatar have contributed to the emotional labor literature with their publications in recent years.The results reveal that relevant scientific research, including emotional labor, is not subject to geographical limitations; on the contrary, more collaboration brings more success.

Institutional Bibliographic Coupling
Within the bibliographic coupling method, two documents referencing a shared work establish a connection; this relationship is termed bibliographic coupling (Kessler, 1963).In Figure 7., the bibliographic coupling of institutions is shown with a overlay visualization map.In the analysis, "Bibliographic coupling" was selected as the analysis type, "organizations" was selected as the analysis unit, and institutions with at least 10 documents and at least 10 citations were included in the analysis.By computing the TLS values for bibliographic coupling links, along with document and citation counts, across all 84 out of 2308 organizations meeting these criteria, the top 10 organizations with the highest TLS were identified.According to the overlay visualization map, the yellow-framed National Sun Yat-sen University, Inha University, Hanyang University, Hong Kong University of Education, and Beijing Normal University represent institutions recently published on emotional labor studies.

Examining Co-citations among Cited Sources
Co-citation refers to the frequency with which other sources cite two documents together.When two documents are cited jointly in at least one other document, they are considered co-cited.The greater the co-citation frequency between two documents, the stronger their co-citation strength, indicating a higher level of semantic relatedness (Van Eck & Waltman, 2014).Finally, the green cluster includes journals such as Human Relations, with 1091 citations, 63181 TLS, and Administrative Science Quarterly, with 1018 citations and 69620 TLS.

Analysis of Keyword Co-Occurrences
Similar to how a keyword represents the main content of an article, the frequency of occurrence and co-occurrence can also indicate, to some degree, the themes prevalent in a specific area (Zong, 2013).Figure 9. illustrates the network visualization map depicting keyword co-occurrence in emotional labor research.Selecting a minimum keyword repetition threshold of 10 reveals that 125 of 5656 keywords meet this criterion.• Red Cluster (32 keywords): This cluster's most frequently used keywords are emotions and gender.Other keywords include nurses, intersectionality, health care, power, care, and race.
• Green Cluster (27 keywords): The prominent words in this cluster are job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, and emotional intelligence.Other keywords in the cluster are job performance, intention to leave, psychological empowerment, psychological capital, and service performance.
• Blue Cluster (20 keywords): The term "Burnout" stands out prominently within this cluster.In the cluster, stress, work stress, teachers, social support, and awareness are some of the other main keywords.
• Yellow Cluster (19 keywords): The standout term within this cluster is "mental health."Other keywords prominently used in this cluster are depression, occupational stress, occupational health, nurse, and women.
• Purple Cluster (17 keywords): In this cluster, customer service, empathy, leadership, display rules, emotional commitment, emotion regulation, and authenticity are located.
• Turquoise Cluster (6 keywords): This cluster's leading words are autonomy, emotional management, emotional regulation, and emotional dissonance.
• Orange Cluster (4 keywords): The main keywords of this cluster are culture, hospitality, human resources management, and tourism.
• Brown Cluster (2 keywords): The principal keywords are deep acting and surface acting.

CONCLUSION
This study examined emotional labor research using bibliometrics and science mapping analysis.Data was collected from the Web of Science (WOS) database and subsequently analyzed using the VOSviewer software.The analysis encompassed bibliometric and science mapping, investigating publication trends, leading authors, institutions, journals, and countries.Furthermore, the study delved into co-authorship among countries, bibliometric coupling of institutions, co-citation of sources, and the co-occurrence between keywords, all visualized on network maps.
The results reveal that publication trends have experienced a notable rise, particularly since 2005.The most productive and cited author on emotional labor is Alicia A. Grandey; The USA stands out as the most productive country, the most influential journal Frontiers in Psychology, and the most effective institution is Pennsylvania State University.Country co-authorship analysis reveals that the United States has strong cooperation with other countries, such as Canada, South Korea, Germany, Singapore, China, the United Kingdom, and Australia.According to keyword analysis, burnout, surface acting, job satisfaction, deep acting, and emotional exhaustion emerge as the top five common keywords in research on emotional labor, in that order.Penn State University stands out as the best institution in bibliometric coupling, followed by the University of Akron and National Sun Yat-sen University.The Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy Management Journal, and Journal of Organizational Behavior are frequently cited sources.
Although the research draws a comprehensive picture of publications on emotional labor, it has some limitations.Given the restriction to the WoS database for data analysis, it's worth noting that bibliometric outcomes might vary if data from sources other than WoS are utilized (Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016;Cansun & Arık, 2018).The study's critical limitations include the exclusion of international databases such as Scopus and Pubmed, national databases of countries, and other sources that are not circulated online.Future research can support this study by working with more comprehensive sources covering more data on interpreting emotional labor.The findings have shown valuable insights into the emotional labor literature with bibliometric and scientific mapping analyses.This study on emotional labor will guide future researchers seeking a more profound understanding of this field.
The research is one of the first examples in the relevant literature conducted using bibliometric techniques.The scope of the publications and their characteristics within the scope of the research in the world literature has been revealed through the study.This general framework contributes to researchers who follow the developments worldwide and enrich their studies.The information presented has been analyzed in an integrated manner, including the direction in which the trends in the field have developed.Regarding the results obtained, essential data will be provided on research profiles and trends by presenting to the readers which countries and educational institutions actively address emotional labor and related concepts in the focus of current discussions and developments in the world.In the light of these insights, developing trends can be determined, focal points can be defined, and focal points of future research can be predicted.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Trends in the Number of Documents Published in Emotional Labor Studies

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Visualizing Networks: Leading Authors in High-Impact Emotional Labor Research

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Visualizing Networks: Emotional Labor Research in the Most Productive Countries

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Visualizing Networks: Top Journals in Emotional Labor Research

Figure 4 .
highlight the journal activity, showcasing Frontiers in Psychology as the most dynamic, with 77 documents, 724 citations, and 758 TLS.The International Journal of Hospitality Management closely follows, with 56 documents, 3130 citations, and 1077 TLS.The International Journal Contemporary Hospitality Management is ranked third, with 50 documents, 1546 citations, and 548 TLS.Subsequently, the Journal of Applied Psychology follows with 49 documents, 6872 citations, and 1681 TLS.The International Journal of Environmental Research Public Health trails with 44 documents, 599 citations, and 280 TLS.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Visualizing Leading Institutions in Emotional Labor Research Networks

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Visualizing Country Collaboration in Emotional Labor Research (The Overlay Visualization Map)

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Visualizing Institutional Bibliographic Coupling in Emotional Labor Research (The Overlay Visualization Map)

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Visualizing Co-citation Patterns Among Sources in Emotional Labor Research.

Figure 9 .
Figure 9. Visualizing the Network of Keyword Co-Occurrences in Emotional Labor Research

Table 2 .
The Highly Cited Authors in Emotional Labor Research

Table 1 .
and Figure2.from the VOSviewer package program, according to the order of the number of documents, Alicia A. Grandey was the most productive author on the emotional labor literature with the number of 29 documents, 4462 citations and 6965 TLS.Mary E. Guy is followed by 26 documents, 586 citations and 881 TLS.Marcus Groth ranked third with 21 documents, 2263 citations, 2967 TLS, Won Moo Hur ranked fourth with 21 documents, 650 citations, 1261 TLS, and Sharon H. Mastracci ranked fifth with 18 documents, 323 citations, 418 TLS.As a result, out of the 6.367 authors who published emotional labor literature, Alicia A. Grandey appears the most productive.
When the data is analyzed using Table2.andFigure2.from the VOSviewer package program, Alicia A. Grandey appears as the most cited author with 29 documents, 4462 citations and 6965 TLS according to the number of citations.James M. Diefendorff follows him with 17 documents, 2822 citations, and 4784 TLS.Markus Groth is in third place with 21 documents, 2263 citations and 2967 TLS, Deborah E. Rupp is in fourth place with 9 documents, 1621 citations, 1007 TLS, and Ute R. Hülseger is in fifth place with 6 documents, 1614 citations, 366 TLS.As a result of the analysis of bibliographic data with VOSviewer software, it is revealed that Alicia A.

Table 3 .
Leading Nations in Emotional Labor Research

Table 4 .
Leading Journals in Emotional Labor Research Publications Frontiers in Psychology journal appears as the most active journal that publishes the most on emotional labor literature.Table4.and