Analysis of Research Trends and Knowledge Structure Related to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act Using Social Network Analysis

This study aimed to identify research trends and knowledge structures in papers related to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act published in domestic academic journals from 2020 to 2025. Specifically, it aimed to systematize fragmented multidisciplinary discussions across fields such as law, safety engineering, and business administration from a macroscopic perspective and provide implications for developing effective future research strategies. To this end, a social network analysis was conducted using paper data collected from the Korea Citation Index (KCI) under the keyword “Serious Accidents Punishment Act.” A network was constructed based on the frequency of co-occurrence among keywords, and four indices—degree, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centrality—were calculated to analyze core topics and structural relationships. The analysis results show that related research reached its peak in 2022, the first year of the law's enforcement, and has since become established as an academic topic. In particular, “ESG” overwhelmingly ranked first in connection and betweenness centrality, demonstrating that serious accident prevention is a strategic risk management element for companies and a key bridge connecting multidisciplinary discussions. At the same time, the rise of smart safety technology keywords such as “IoT monitoring” confirms that the research area is expanding into practical solutions. This empirically demonstrates that serious accident prevention is an essential strategy and risk management element for corporate sustainable management. Since current research is still in its initial stages, subordinated to the title of the higher-level law, future research requires micro-level studies that elucidate the causal relationships between subordinate keywords such as “risk assessment” and “exemption grounds,” as well as research on response models specialized for small businesses.