This paper uses more than 4500 pieces of ecological compensation transfer payment literature from the WOS and CNKI databases as the foundation for understanding the hot spots and emerging trends in the field. CiteSpace software is used to precisely draw keyword highlighting, keyword clustering, and other related knowledge maps, as well as to analyze the annual publication of literature, research authors, research institutions, country distribution, and research on ecological compensation transfer payments. The annual publication of literature, research authors, research institutions, national distribution, research hot spots, frontier concerns, etc. were all subjected to a scientific bibliometric study. ① The findings indicate that the annual output of literature has basically progressed through three stages: beginning, developing, and maturing. ② The United States, China, England, Australia, and other nations make up the majority of the writers and institutions cited in the literature, which serves as the foundation for ecological compensatory transfer payments. ③ Research hot zones include the value of environmental services, fiscal policy, transfer payments, and ecological compensation. The primary areas of frontier research are payment for environmental services, ecological compensation methods, and important ecological function regions.