A Bibliometric Analysis of Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Imperatives of Sustainable Finance

Abstract

Unlike conventional finance, sustainable finance aims to integrate social, environmental, and climate change considerations into the business strategies of financial institutions. The financial system's capacity to effectively respond to the demands of the sustainability transition relies on a comprehensive transformation that encompasses regulatory, political, structural, theoretical, and relational shifts. Our bibliometric performance analysis of 377 publications reveals that the United Kingdom, China, the United States, Switzerland, and Japan, China are the leading centers of research excellence in sustainable finance. These countries are the most productive and host the most relevant institutions. Furthermore, the dominance of trans disciplinary journals over traditional finance and economics sources is evident. Conversely, our network map analysis highlights the significant relevance of sustainable and green banks' involvement in sustainable development. However, the relatively low density of this network underscores the existence of important research gaps. Therefore, we conduct an analysis of the literature on this specific topic to derive its conceptual structure and gain a deeper understanding of the crucial role banks play in the sustainability transition. Key research themes in this context include the relationship between sustainability performance and banks' profitability, the risk profiles of sustainable banks, the factors influencing banks' willingness to incorporate sustainability criteria into their business strategies, customers' responsiveness to banks' sustainability performance, and the relevant macro prudential regulations, monetary policies, and supervisory guidelines that facilitate the sustainability transition.Consequently, this paper conducts a qualitative-quantitative analysis that combines bibliometric methods to examine the trends in sustainable finance literature within the Web of Science database and to identify potential directions for future research.