Development and Path of Reclaimed Water Utilization Policy in China: Visual Analysis Based on CNKI and WOS

In this paper, CiteSpace and NVivo software were used for the knowledge graph visualization and content analysis of highly cited papers in the research literature on reclaimed water utilization policy in CNKI and WOS. The results showed the following: there was an upward trend in the number of papers on reclaimed water policy, papers in both databases attached great importance to research on this topic, and the research prospects for this topic are broad. The UK, Greece, Italy, the United States, and France have great influence in the field of reclaimed water utilization policy research. The international influence of China’s research on the topic needs to be improved. There is a lack of communication and cooperation among the subjects of reclaimed water utilization policy research, and a cooperative network with close and benign interactions has not yet been formed. The research hotspots of the topic in China are mainly focused on regional governance, with insufficient attention paid to policy and management, while foreign countries pay more attention to policy and management. Behavior guidance policy and black and smelly water will become research hotspots for domestic policies, while public perception, demand, drinking water, and carbon will become research hotspots for international policies. Domestic research on reclaimed water use policy in highly cited papers focused on water environment and ecological security management, while international research focused on the background of reclaimed water use policy and its implementation, with the main intention of optimizing the ascension path and making international research policies thematically stronger. The attitudes of domestic and foreign researchers regarding reclaimed water utilization policies are mainly rational and emotional, indicating that current policies have a degree of applicability. However, there are also obvious problems that will need to be addressed and improved, and there are substantial development prospects. In the future, research on reclaimed water utilization policies in China should strengthen top-level design, improve the policy system, and increase the supervision of policies to achieve optimization.