Abstract: Against the backdrop of accelerated global sustainable development and ecological civilization construction, public participation has become an important research topic in the field of environmental sciences. Based on the Web of Science Core Collection from 2010 to 2025, this study employed CiteSpace for visualization analysis to systematically reveal research hotspots and development trends from the perspectives of keyword co-occurrence, clustering structure, temporal evolution, and burst detection. The results show that studies from 2010 to 2014 mainly focused on environmental policy and the construction of participation systems; from 2015 to 2019, research attention gradually shifted to citizen science and community participation practices; and from 2020 to 2025, environmental communication, ecosystem services, and stakeholder participation received increasing attention. Keyword clustering analysis indicates that science communication, environmental management, citizen science, climate change, public perceptions, and environmental education constitute the main research directions in this field. The international collaboration network presents a pattern of Western dominance, the rise of the Asia-Pacific region, and multi-center cooperation, with China-related research showing rapid growth driven by the dual-carbon strategy and scientific and technological innovation. Overall, public participation research is deepening from a single governance perspective toward interdisciplinary, multi-actor, and value-coordinated approaches, providing scientific support for building an inclusive, just, and sustainable environmental governance system.