Path dependence and lock-in are widely applied to explain the institutional change, economic evolution, geographical expansion, organizational reform, and technological innovation, so the research on it has important theoretical value. However, Studies on path dependence and lock-in have indicated several limitations, such as chaotic literature information, interdisciplinarity complexity, and development process vagueness, so that scholars cannot intuitively understand its evolution and research direction in a short time. Meanwhile, the existing research also points out the following characters in this field: (a) there is a lack of connection between the theory and empirical research of path dependence and lock-in, and (b) the future research trend is to focus on empirical research, and path lock-out. However, the number and scope of the literature sorted out by these research institutes are limited, and the conclusions of qualitative induction are relatively broad and lack of quantitative basis, which cannot fully reveal the development history, research hotspot and frontier in this field. It is found that the above problems are all related to the development process of path dependence and lock-in. Therefore, how to grasp the development process of path dependence and lock-in research quickly and comprehensively is the focus of this paper.  

This paper focuses on exploring the development process of path dependence and lock-in in the research area of humanities and social sciences based on mapping knowledge domains and information visualization. Firstly, the process model of path dependence and lock-in development process by CiteSpace is built, which is an analysis process of one-to-one correspondence between method and content including research route, CiteSpace technology, and visualization mapping knowledge domains. Meanwhile, 328 literatures from web of science core collection database are pre-treated respectively. Secondly, the development process of path dependence and lock-in is analyzed emphatically: (a) the development history mapping knowledge domains including time-line mapping of evolution stage and cluster mapping of research topics variation are drawn and analyzed, and (b) the keyword co-occurrence mapping of research hotspot in recent five years is drawn and analyzed.

The study contributes to path dependence and lock-in theory and visualization by the existing literatures of database and CiteSpace technology. According to the research, the development process of path dependence and lock-in can be categorized as follows: (a) the development history have gone through four stages: political policy, case study, lock-in or reform, and path creation, and (b) path lock-in, firms and political policy are three research hotspots in this area, and (c) there are three main developing trends, among which the research level is from macro-level to micro-level, the research ideas can be transited from the basic research of phenomenon interpretation to the development research of problem-solving, and lock-in mathematical modeling is replacing case study as the main research method. 

So far, a panoramic knowledge mapping of path dependence and lock-in is displayed, and the development process of path dependence and lock-in research since 1985 has been cleared up from three aspects of development history, research hotspot and frontier, which confirms the viewpoints of lack of micro enterprise discussion and empirical research methods in the existing research, which provides a strong basis for later researchers to better grasp the research trajectories of this field, it also provides ideas for choosing their future research directions. Moreover, on the practical level of path dependence and lock-in, in the process of catching up and transformation, China′s latecomers are facing passive lock-in such as technology lock-in and low-end lock-in, but they also have the late-mover advantages with Chinese characteristics, and they are striving to catch up and surpass in the practice of breakthrough and lock-out through radical technology innovation and disruptive market innovation.