Understanding the Evolution of Environment,Social and Governance Research: Novel Implications From Bibliometric and Network Analysis

Abstract

Given the scarcity of comprehensive review studies in the literature, this bibliometric analysis thrives on taking a scientific approach to delivering quantitative and qualitative information on the ever-evolving field of ESG. Utilizing the performance analysis and science mapping techniques which includes citation analysis, co-word analysis, the study reports a holistic overview of 693 (ESG) papers from 1991 to 2020. The paper aims to provide a unified perspective on the evolution and further identify future research directions in this field. The findings point to the most important countries, authors, studies, and top journals in this field. Results show that published articles on ESG gained momentum after 2006; however, an exponential rise is being observed in the past 5 years, with research focusing on sustainable finance, sustainable development, ESG, and CSR with themes extending to risk management, stakeholder engagement, and portfolio construction, among others. Furthermore, the research identifies how the practice of ESG reporting affects many variables such as financial performance, social performance, environmental performance, and sustainability score. The findings also indicate that the field of ESG is still evolving, with numerous unexplored themes. The work is novel and relevant on the pretext that it uses the Scopus and Web of Science databases for bibliometric mapping, whereas previous studies have used the Scopus database but have lacked a robust methodology, so the findings of this study provided strong support for identifying emerging paradigms in the ESG literature.

Keywords

science mapping bibliometric analysis bibliographic coupling bibliometric review performance analysis citation analysis corporate social responsibility environment,social and governance

Research highlights

1. The study examined 693 works on ESG research published till 2020 using bibliometrics.

2. A comprehensive literature on ESG from the Web of Science and Scopus databases was collected.

3. An upward publication trend has been witnessed since the launch of the UNPRI in 2006.

4. The governing aspect has garnered the most attention.

5. Most of the cited countries were engaged in significant networking and collaboration with each other.

Introduction

Sustainability is defined as a company’s ability to adapt to changing conditions and originates in ecological and environmental systems (Seuring & Müller, 2008). Previously, the obligation of corporations was restricted to philanthropic aspects; however, because of unanticipated climatic threats, sustainable development emerged as a concern in the 1980s to preserve society and the environment. In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development produced the Brundtland Report and coined the term “sustainable development.” According to Varsei et al. (2014), the adoption of sustainability principles by corporations has given birth to the concept of corporate sustainability. The concept is described as “adopting business strategies and activities that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders today, while protecting, sustaining, and enhancing the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future” (Business Council for Sustainable Development, Deloitte & Touche, & International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1992, p. 1). However, social responsibility has attracted a wide range of viewpoints. While the classical economist Milton Friedman (1970) upheld an extremist view, contending that profit maximization was the sole social responsibility of business, Browne and Haas (1974) and Elkington (1998) firmly supported the opposing view of foregoing earnings in pursuit of social responsibility.

Aras and Crowther (2008) proposed a four-dimensional approach to corporate sustainability, namely, environmental impact, societal influence, organizational culture, and financial sustainability. Before 2010, most sustainability research (Chen et al., 2022; Dyllick & Hockerts, 2002) recognized only two dimensions—the environment and society. A few have recognized a third aspect (e.g., Spangenberg, 2004) linked to organizational behavior. There has been an increase in research on sustainability that takes a three-dimensional approach—environment, social, and governance. Girerd-Potin et al. (2013), however, divided sustainability into three categories: business, environment, and finance. This study dismissed the notion of keeping employees in a societal context and treating all people equally.

On examining the various international frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiatives, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Framework, Wuppertal Sustainability Indicators, and Sustainability Metrics of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the measures of sustainability performance are witnessed as economic, environmental, and social (Rajesh, 2020; Zhao et al., 2022a). Governance is referred to as the Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) concept of corporate sustainability (Docekalova & Kocmanova, 2015; Lau, 2019; Tamimi & Sebastianelli, 2017). ESG engagement is believed to aid organizations in their efficiency and sustainability (Piao et al., 2022).

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has also endorsed the exigencies of corporate responsibility in the contemporary, dynamic environment. It is indeed crucial to realize that in this globalized world, when a crisis occurs in one part of the world, the impact shakes faraway continents. Additionally, in the past, environmental disasters such as the Union Carbide gas leak (India) in 1984, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion (Ukraine) in 1986, the oil-well fire during the Gulf War (Kuwait) in 1991, the Exxon Valdez oil spill (USA) in 1989, and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (USA) in 2010 emphasized the urgency of demonstrating environmentally responsible behavior. The ill-famed accounting and governance failure scams, such as Enron, Satyam, Harshad Mehta, Maxwell, BCCI, Tyco fraud, WorldCom, Ponzi schemes such as Bernard Madoff, and the subprime mortgage crisis led to massive job losses, wiped out faith in regulatory bodies, and eradicated hard-earned retirement funds of employees (Christofi et al., 2012). Consequently, these incidents propelled distress and apprehension among stakeholders over the conduct of businesses and thereupon steered multi-fold development in the field of ESG (Rajesh, 2020). Recently, the ESG agenda has also advanced due to the adoption of initiatives such as the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment (UNPRI) and Sustainable Development Goals (Linnenluecke, 2022).

Due to the growing importance of ESG, it is vital to compile and analyze previous studies. Bibliometric methods obtain bibliographic data from e-databases (Secinaro et al., 2020). The accessibility of bibliographic data and user-friendly software has resulted in an increase in the number of bibliometric studies in various fields (Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015; Zhao et al., 2022b). Thus, the primary motive of this paper is to present an overview on ESG through a bibliometric study. However, the first step in conducting a bibliometric analysis is to evaluate the relevant databases, their respective fits, and the consequences of adopting one over the other. The validity of any research is contingent on the selection of the base, which should adequately cover the area under investigation (Granda-Orive et al., 2013). Meanwhile, research comparing the popular databases Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus has concluded that both databases are improving, and there is no clear superiority of any over the other (Bakkalbasi et al., 2006). For comprehensive coverage, both databases were employed for this study.

The objective of this bibliometric analysis was to track the intellectual and theoretical evolution of the ESG domain. An advanced search of terms linked to ESG was conducted in both databases to identify publications in journals indexed in these databases. In this way, 693 papers published up to 2020 were chosen for the empirical investigation, which was carried out using the RStudio program, and the following research questions were addressed in this work (Zupic & Čater, 2014):

Q1: What are the current publication volumes and trends related to the ESG field?

Q2: What insights can be gained from this trend?

Q3: Which nations have the most influential ESG publications?

Q4: Which are the top journals publishing articles on ESG?

Q5: Which themes under ESG have historically and currently been popular among scholars and which areas have future study potential?

To answer these research questions, the WoS and Scopus databases were searched for papers published on the topic of ESG. The numerous dimensions in which the studies were conducted, as well as the developing study areas, were determined using bibliometric analysis. RStudio and Biblioshiny software were used to obtain quantitative data and graphical visualization to demonstrate research hotspots, emerging prospects, and intelligent networks. This further enabled us to identify and evaluate leading journals extensively publishing on ESG, notable authors, and key nations in which research has been undertaken.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the research acquisition and methodology, which deals with the collection of studies and the selection of the final sample. Section 3 enumerates the findings of the bibliometric analysis. Finally, Section 4 concludes the study with future research implications.

Research Acquisition and Methodology

Research Acquisition

The Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are the most comprehensive abstract and citation databases of peer-reviewed publications, including nearly all of the world’s most extensive and credible scientific literature (Zhang et al., 2020). Here, the literature on ESG from these two databases was collected and collated to conduct quantitative analysis with a set of bibliometric techniques, such as citation analysis, co-word analysis, and bibliographic coupling. These techniques are extensively employed in social science and management studies to display trends in research and to provide an understanding of the evolution of major themes (Jia et al., 2018).

Database choice

Before the creation of Scopus and Google Scholar in 2004, WoS was the exclusive citation analysis tool. However, the dubious quality of Google Scholar data raises questions regarding its validity. As a result, WoS and Scopus are the leading citation databases (Archambault et al., 2006; Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016). Multiple databases were used to gain a better grasp of the significance, scientific depth, and standing of the topic under exploration (Secinaro et al., 2020). Only one prior bibliometric literature review study on ESG (Gao et al., 2021) was found; this study included only the literature covered in the Scopus database. Thus, comprehensiveness, completeness, extensiveness, and interdisciplinary coverage of WoS and Scopus became the rationale for incorporating both databases.

Research Method

Search terms and data cleaning

The literature search included all the research articles that mentioned the terms “ESG” or “Environment Social Governance” in the title, abstracts, or keywords, using regular expressions wherever applicable. The “AND” and “OR” Boolean operators were used. On using these criteria, the original results showed that 2,943 documents were published in WoS and 5656 documents in Scopus. The study was limited to full articles and excluded book chapters, conference papers, editorials, etc., as these resources do not pass through the same rigorous review procedure (Singh et al., 2021). The “document types” were limited to articles or review articles for both the databases, while based on the area of interest for this study. The “discipline category” was limited to “Business Finance,” “Business,” “Management,” or “Economics” for WoS and “Business, Management, and Accounting” or “Economics, Econometrics, and Finance” for Scopus.

The remaining articles, 711 and 867, in WoS and Scopus, respectively, were further filtered by deleting the years 2021 and 2022 to limit the impact of the temporal component on statistical outcomes due to the unavailability of complete data for the publishing year (Gao et al., 2021). To avoid unwanted linguistic influence, the article language was likewise confined to English. Ultimately, the final export included 575 documents from each database, that is, a total of 1,150 documents with information on keywords, author data, citations, references, and article metadata. Documents were merged into a single file and redundancy removal was performed using RStudio. Data cleaning was necessary because these databases were not created expressly for bibliometric analysis and multiple inaccurate items had to be removed (Donthu et al., 2021). A total of 230 duplicates were eliminated, and 36 articles that first appeared in 2020 but were published in 2021 were manually removed. Articles not belonging to the subject domain were removed after scrutinizing the abstracts. After adequate refinement and post-filtration, 693 articles were left for final analysis. Figure 1 provides the overview of data retrieval process in a concise manner.

Figure 1.

Data retrieval process. Source: Author’s elaboration.

Bibliometric analysis is designed to handle large volumes of bibliometric data (Ramos-Rodríguez & Ruíz-Navarro, 2004), and if there are hundreds (e.g., 500 or more) or thousands of studies, the research field is deemed to be substantial enough to warrant the use of bibliometric analysis (Donthu et al., 2021). This also substantiates the rationale for conducting this bibliometric review.

The retrieval procedure was as follows:

WoS:

TI=ESG OR AK=ESG OR AB=ESG OR (TI = ENVIRONMENT* AND TI = SOCIAL* AND TI = GOVERN*) OR (AB = ENVIRONMENT AND AB= SOCIAL AND AB= GOVERNANCE) OR (AK = ENVIRONMENT AND AK=GOVERNANCE AND AK= SOCIAL) AND Articles or Review Articles (Document Types) AND Business Finance or Business or Management or Economics (Web of Science Categories) AND 2021 or 2022(Exclude – Publication) AND English (Language)

SCOPUS:

TITLE-ABS-KEY(esg) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(ENVIRON*SOCIAL* GOVERN*) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA,“BUSI”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA,“ECON”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE,“re”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, “English”)) AND (EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR,2022) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR,2021))

Findings and Discussion

The analysis of the findings began with a preliminary summary of the bibliometric statistics. This study then looked at the number of articles, leading publishing nations, journals, notable authors, the most cited papers, and keyword evolution to identify trends. Various measures of performance analysis including publication-based metrics, citation-based metrics, and science mapping tools, such as citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-word analysis (Donthu et al., 2021) were used. The contributions of research constituents (e.g., authors, institutions, countries, and journals) to a specific topic were investigated using performance analysis (Cobo et al., 2011; Ramos-Rodríguez & Ruíz-Navarro, 2004). This analysis is descriptive in scope and is the essence of bibliometric research (Donthu et al., 2021). However, science mapping examines the connections between research constituents (Baker et al., 2021; Cobo et al., 2011; Ramos-Rodríguez & Ruíz-Navarro, 2004). The volume of publications and citations each year or per research constituent are two noteworthy performance analysis indicators, where publication is a measure of productivity and citation is a yardstick for contribution and impact. Citation analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, co-word analysis, and co-authorship analysis are some of the tools used in science mapping. Such methodologies, when combined with network analysis, help establish a field’s bibliometric and intellectual structure (Baker et al., 2021; Tunger & Eulerich, 2018).

Descriptive Bibliometric Analysis

Descriptive bibliometric analysis provides a summary of the extant literature by quantifying different attributes of any research topic. It may also help determine what stage of research a topic is at, as well as how broad or narrow the area is, based on various factors, such as the period, number of researchers, and so on.

Table 1 shows the information on the final 693 peer-reviewed research articles spread over a period of 30 years (1991–2020), which indicates that the field of ESG has not seen vast publications despite its rapid growth and that further academic work in the field can be expected. The number of authors researching this field is 1389, which signifies the popularity of the area in the academic community. Moreover, each article had two authors on average, and the collaboration index (CI), which was estimated as the total number of authors of multi-authored papers divided by the total number of multi-authored papers, was 2.32 (Elango & Rajendran, 2012; Koseoglu, 2016), indicating that collaboration practices were becoming the norm among scholars and researchers.

Table 1.

Main Information.

Main information	Description	No.
Period	Years of publication	1991–2020
Sources (journals, books, etc.)	The frequency distribution of sources as journals	263
Documents	Total number of documents	693
Average citations per document	Average number of citations in each article	24.64
Authors’ keywords	Total number of keywords	1,682
Authors	Total number of authors	1,389
Author appearances	The authors’ frequency distribution	1,703
Authors of single-authored documents	The number of single authors per article	133
Authors of multi-authored documents	The number of authors of multi-authored articles	1256
Authors per document	Average number of authors in each document	2
Collaboration index	Total number of authors of multi-authored articles/total number of multi-authored articles	2.32

The first article related to ESG in the database was published in 1991 (Boeninger, 1991). Though clear and distinct dimensions of sustainability as “Environment, Social, and Governance” first appeared in the UN report “Who Cares Wins” in 2004, it was a matter of discussion previously under the Socially Responsible Investing (Rosen et al., 1991; Schueth, 2003; Van den Brink & van der Woerd, 2004), Global Reporting Initiative (Hedberg & von Malmborg, 2003), CSR (Clarkson, 1995; Griffin & Mahon, 1997), Governance (Aguilera & Jackson, 2003; Dalton et al., 1999; Wang & Coffey, 1992), and Triple Bottom Line (Elkington, 1998). The UNPRI¹ was launched in 2006, making way for responsible investing and ESG investing (Crifo & Forget, 2013; Richardson, 2009; Woods & Urwin, 2010). Consequently, an upward publication trend can be seen from 2006 (Figure 2). Another intriguing period was between 2016 and 2020 when there was a sharp increase in the number of publications. This indicates that ESG as a research field is gaining popularity in academia and is still in the embryonic stage.

Figure 2.

Annual scientific production.

Country of Publication and Collaboration Network

This section analyses country-specific publications and their collaboration to show the geographies of the research. It includes all published documents, citations, and collaboration networks. Exploring research trends in different geographies can help us understand the nature and scope of a research problem and provide potential solutions. It describes the research priorities, goals, and perspectives of a country. In terms of the current topic, ESG and sustainability are primarily the focus of developed and developing countries, whereas underdeveloped countries in Africa and Latin America have not yet focused on ESG. A plausible explanation could be that they are more concerned with internal issues, such as food crises, energy crises, fewer benefits of globalization, security concerns, poverty, and poor education. Additionally, an assessment of the contribution of the country to the intellectual growth of any particular field can be made.

However, exploring the collaboration networks of countries is useful for determining shared beliefs, policy formulation, and the alignment of bilateral and multilateral projects as well as determining which countries are engaged in knowledge exchange.

The USA topped the list of countries with the maximum number of articles published on the topic (197), followed by the UK (112), France (70), Australia (65), Italy (64), and Spain (60). Evidently, the theme has developed majorly in high-income economies located on different continents, highlighting a growing interest in globalized policies related to corporate sustainability and sustainable development. In Asia, China, India, and Malaysia were involved in the ESG field, while the United Kingdom and France were the leading producers of studies on this topic in Europe (Table 2). The findings were not unexpected, given that the UK was the foremost to initiate governance reforms, based on the recommendations of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance (1992), popularly known as the Cadbury report, while the United States and Australia saw big corporate fraud in 2000 (Singh et al., 2021). Recently, environmental regulation, ESG portfolios, innovation, socially responsible investment, and pension funds have been the subject of studies in the United States (Alda & Vicente, 2021; Dicuonzo et al., 2022; Mukherjee & Sohrabji, 2022; Ouchen, 2021). The United Kingdom has been concentrating on the ESG-liquidity-stock-return nexus, exchange-traded funds, innovation, socially responsible investment, and pension funds (Albitar et al., 2022; Dicuonzo et al., 2022; Rompotis, 2022).

Table 2.

Country Scientific Production.

Country	Total number of articles
USA	197
UK	112
France	70
Australia	65
Italy	64
Spain	60
Germany	55
Canada	45
China	39
Netherlands	30
India	27
Malaysia	23
South Korea	17
South Africa	16
Brazil	15
Sweden	14
Japan	13
Greece	12
Switzerland	12
Lebanon	11

It was interesting to see that the top countries in the total citation ranking (Table 3) were nearly the same as the scientific production ranking, except India. More importantly, on analyzing the collaboration network (Figure 3), it was observed that most of the cited countries were engaged in significant networking and collaboration with each other. Therefore, despite being actively engaged in ESG research, India lagged in the total citation ranking due to non-participation in cross-border research cooperation. Dicuonzo et al. (2022) investigated the impact of innovation on ESG practices in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Baraibar-Diez and Odriozola (2019) examined the impact of a CSR committee on ESG performance in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Germany. These countries are at the top of the most-cited list because of their international engagement.

Table 3.

Most Cited Countries.

Country	Total citations	Average article citations
USA	4,975	50.77
Germany	1,531	43.74
Australia	1,369	31.84
Spain	1,350	32.93
UK	1,293	24.87
Italy	996	29.29
Netherlands	701	38.94
France	589	19
China	564	26.86
Canada	351	15.95
Pakistan	238	79.33
Brazil	234	33.43
South Africa	222	17.08
Malaysia	210	10.5
India	158	7.9
Lebanon	130	26
Sweden	130	26
Mexico	123	123
Belgium	103	34.33
Finland	103	103

Figure 3.

Collaboration network.

Figure 4 shows that many regions, such as Central Asia and Africa, are still not engaged in the scientific debate, and research has not developed on the ESG topic.

Figure 4.

Country and scientific production.

As a way forward, it would be preferable to undertake research in numerous countries, compare them, analyze other industries and sectors, and adopt a more international approach.

Core Journals in ESG and Journal Performance

A researcher must be familiar with the major journals in their field of interest to obtain high-quality and impactful literature and, later, to compile a list of target journals for the publication of their findings. Hence, leading journals publishing on ESG were examined. The 693 articles in the two databases were spread across 263 journals in several domains such as finance, investment, ethics, strategy, management, production, and banking. Approximately 45% of the literature corpus was published in the top 20 journals. Table 4 shows the top 20 journals in terms of the number of articles, and the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment published by Taylor and Francis topped the list with 43 research papers. The existence of a core journal in sustainable finance and its leading position indicates the growing significance of sustainable finance and investment practices. The Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment covers a range of topics, such as socially responsible investment, ESG ratings, clean energy, sustainable valuation, green bonds, climate risk management, and renewable energy (Aydın & Rainer, 2020; Burchi & Włodarczyk, 2020; D’Orazio & Löwenstein, 2020; Kanamura, 2020; Riedl, 2020; Wang et al., 2022; Yamahaki et al., 2020). However, recent research in the journal has focused on sustainable stock market indices, sustainable investing, and climate risk (Kaur & Chaudhary, 2022; Rubtsov & Shen, 2022; Shanmugam et al., 2022).

Table 4.

Most Relevant Journals (No. of Documents).

Name of the journal	Beginning of ESG coverage	Total papers (TP)	Total citations (TC)	ACPD
Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment	2011	43	599	13.93
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management	2008	41	2009	49.00
Business Strategy and the Environment	2010	39	1522	39.03
Journal of Business Ethics	2005	35	2134	60.97
Journal of Portfolio Management	2019	23	97	4.22
Sustainability Accounting Management and Policy Journal	2015	14	243	17.36
Journal of Cleaner Production	2015	13	539	41.46
Journal of Investing	2019	12	23	1.92
Management Decision	2010	10	212	21.20
Journal of Asset Management	2014	10	173	17.30
Social Responsibility Journal	2013	9	109	12.11
Corporate Governance—An International Review	2007	8	828	103.5
Journal of Banking & Finance	2013	8	450	56.25
Journal of Corporate Finance	2015	7	239	34.14
Harvard Business Review	1994	7	131	18.71
Finance Research Letters	2015	7	55	7.86
Journal of Index Investing	2018	7	12	1.71
Business & Society	2011	6	532	88.67
Global Finance Journal	2018	6	165	27.50
Journal of Business Research	2016	6	144	24.00

Note. ACPD, Average citation per document.

This ranking was followed by the Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management Journal, with 41 publications. Next in line were the Business Strategy and the Environment, Journal of Business Ethics, and Journal of Portfolio Management, to name a few.

ESG research has been published in various journals dealing with portfolio management, investing, asset management, and business research. Most of the top 20 journals are published in the finance and investing disciplines, which also enables us to deduce that these are the prominent areas of research in the ESG domain.

Table 5 shows the top 20 impactful journals as determined by citations in the databases. Springer Nature’s Journal of Business Ethics, which has 2134 citations, is the most influential in ESG. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management again occupied the second spot with 2009 citations. Despite not being the most productive journal, the Journal of Business Ethics turned out to be the most influential. It was not unexpected since this was an old and reputed journal, whereas the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment was new and had lower citations. As core journals on sustainability are increasing, it shows that the topic is being paid more attention to by the research community and is worth pursuing.

Table 5.

Most Relevant Journals (Total Citations).

Name of the journal	Beginning of ESG coverage	Total papers (TP)	Total citations (TC)	ACPD
Journal of Business Ethics	2005	35	2134	60.97
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management	2008	41	2009	49.00
Business Strategy and the Environment	2010	39	1522	39.03
Strategic Management Journal	2014	3	953	317.67
Corporate Governance—An International Review	2007	8	828	103.50
Academy of Management Journal	1999	1	821	821.00
Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment	2011	43	599	13.93
Journal of Cleaner Production	2015	13	539	41.46
Business & Society	2011	6	532	88.67
Journal of Banking & Finance	2013	8	450	56.25
British Accounting Review	2017	3	252	84.00
Sustainability Accounting Management and Policy Journal	2015	14	243	17.36
Journal of Corporate Finance	2015	7	239	34.14
Management Decision	2010	10	212	21.20
Meditari Accountancy Research	2015	5	197	39.40
Tourism Management	2006	3	196	65.33
Journal of Asset Management	2014	10	173	17.30
Global Finance Journal	2018	6	165	27.50
Economic Modelling	2016	3	155	51.67
Journal of Business Research	2016	6	144	24.00

Note. ACPD, Average citation per document.

Co-Authors Analysis

This section identifies the most active authors in the field in terms of the number of publications and their impact as measured by citations received from other papers. Table 6 lists the authors and their publications in the top 20 rankings and their respective citations. Figure 5 shows the years that the researchers have been active and their respective productivity over this period. The horizontal bar is an indicator of active years, while the size of the bubble reveals the number of articles, and its color variation points toward citations.

Table 6.

Relevant Authors.

Authors	Articles	Total citations	ACPD
Buallay A	7	56	8.00
Serafeim G	6	1,039	173.17
Crifo P	5	115	23.00
Dorfleitner G	5	148	29.60
Eccles R	5	138	27.60
Harjoto M	5	402	80.40
Kocmanova A	5	79	15.80
Lee L	5	49	9.80
Perego P	5	402	80.40
Rezaee Z	5	180	36.00
Utz S	5	84	16.80
Uyar A	5	75	15.00
Ahmed S	4	10	2.50
Camilleri M	4	95	23.75
Escrig-Olmedo E	4	114	28.50
Garcia-Sanchez I	4	294	73.50
Giamporcaro S	4	10	2.50
Giese G	4	43	10.75
Hebb T	4	32	8.00
Jizi M	4	124	31.00

Note. ACPD, Average citation per document.

Figure 5.

Top authors’ active years and production.

Buallay A., the author with the most published articles (7), focused on topics around performance and sustainability reporting in the banking sector (Buallay, 2019; Buallay et al., 2020a, 2020b). In contrast, the next in ranking, Serafeim G., whose articles have also received high citations in the field, touches a wide array of topics, such as corporate social responsibility, performance, ESG investing, and corporate sustainability (Amel-Zadeh & Serafeim, 2018; Cheng et al., 2013; Grewal & Serafeim, 2020).

It was observed that the most productive author is not the most impactful author; authors such as Harjoto M., Perego P., Rezaee Z., Crifo P., and many others have higher citations than Buallay A. A plausible reason for this could be that Buallay A. had begun research in the ESG area recently; the most impactful author, Serafeim G. (Total citations, 1039 & ACPD 173.17), had been contributing to the field since 2013, and other authors of influence also had comparatively longer active years (Figure 5). From Figure 5, it can be clearly deciphered that among the most productive and impactful authors, Perego P. and Harjoto M. were active in the ESG arena earlier than the others. Perego P. deals with sustainability audit assurance and integrated reporting (Caglio et al., 2019; Kolk & Perego, 2010), contrarily, Harjoto M.’s work revolves around corporate governance, ESG performance, corporate social performance, and CSR (Harjoto & Wang, 2020a, 2020b; Jo & Harjoto, 2011). Knowing the most active and influential academicians in their field of interest can help researchers in the development of collaborative projects that result in impactful and high-quality research.

The Evolution of Research Themes

To analyze the trends in research over the years, this study used the authors’ keywords and their frequency per year to map the trend topics plot. The graphical parameters were set to a minimum frequency of five keywords per year, and the number of words was set to five per year. The final plot is shown in Figure 6. The abscissa represents the year, the ordinate represents the keyword, and the graph represents the quartile range of the keyword frequency.

Figure 6.

Trend topics of authors’ keywords.

The length of the bar and size of the bubbles/nodes provide key information about the trends in the field. It illustrates what topics have been researched in the past and in which years extensive work has been done on these topics, as depicted by the size of the buzzle in any particular year. Moreover, information such as current trends offer directions for further research in this area. It can be inferred from Figure 6 that considerable research in the ESG field was conducted between 2011 and 2020.

As research on ESG picked up around 2010, topics related to responsible investment of pension funds (Bianchi et al., 2010; Sievänen et al., 2013; Woods & Urwin, 2010) and ethics (Eccles & Viviers, 2011; Richardson, 2009) became the trend. However, pension funds and institutional investors have recently become too large to diversify their systemic risks, forcing them to consider the environmental and social consequences of investment holdings. Other topics, such as CSR and corporate governance, have also been widely researched, considering the length of the bars and the size of the nodes in Figure 6. CSR and governance were the issues that stakeholders were most interested in before ESG became recognized as a corporate sustainability responsibility. ESG was also found to be of almost paramount importance to senior executives at 43 global institutional investing organizations according to a Harvard Business Review survey. As a result, CSR and governance are becoming less popular, while ESG is receiving increasing research focus. Therefore, a decline in these topics was observed after 2019.

The last half-decade (2015–2020) has seen an upsurge in the literature concentrating on sustainable investing, ESG investing, and company performance in response to the Paris Accord and the announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 (Alessandrini & Jondeau, 2020; Kumar et al., 2022). To fulfill the SDGs, the United Nations forecasts a $5–$7 trillion investment (Craig, 2021). With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) created the SDG finance taxonomy to pave the way for managing the finance and transaction cost of SDG-aligned projects (Wang et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2022c). Hence, research on ESG investing, sustainable investing, and sustainable finance is currently being conducted.

Additionally, some keywords, such as Portfolio theory and Portfolio construction, are new keywords with low frequency, implying that the topics represented by these keywords have gained attention but have not been fully researched. The ability to manage the performance costs of sustainable finance requires optimal portfolio construction modifications (Fu et al., 2020). Additionally, no noticeable performance difference between the portfolio of sustainable and traditional indices was found (Jain et al., 2019). Alessandrini and Jondeau (2020), however, argue that ESG score-based exclusion enhances the ratings of otherwise typical portfolios while maintaining their risk-adjusted performance.

Based on the preceding discussion, it is recommended that future research be pursued in areas related to ESG investment, portfolios, firm performance, and sustainable finance to gain a better understanding of the underlying impact of sustainable finance and ESG investing by examining country-specific findings, cross-country comparisons, and contrasting regionally diverse outcomes.

Conceptual Analysis—Thematic Mapping

The thematic map is highly interpretable and lays the groundwork for the analysis of the four quadrants in which the themes are placed (Cobo et al., 2011; Jelvehgaran Esfahani et al., 2019). Grouping themes into quadrants aid in determining which topics within a field are more developed than others as well as which are emerging and essential and thus require more attention.

The themes were obtained from the clusters of keywords and their interconnections. Two variables identified all the research themes created in this process—“density” and “centrality.” To classify themes, central tendency measurements such as median and mean values for density and centrality could be utilized. The keywords and their linkages form a “thematic network” graph under a subject, with “centrality” on the horizontal axis and “density” on the vertical axis. If a node has a high density of connections with other nodes in the network, it has greater centrality and is important in the network. A node with greater density indicates more bonding or stronger internal correlation intensity between the nodes. The density of a field of study indicates its capacity to be sustained and evolve.

In Figure 7, a thematic map of the field of ESG, with four quadrants Q1–Q4, is provided; the upper right quadrant (Q1) represents driving/motor themes, the lower right quadrant (Q4) represents underlying/basic themes, the upper left quadrant (Q2) represents specialized/niche themes, and the lower left quadrant (Q3) represents emerging/disappearing themes (Agbo et al., 2021; Jelvehgaran Esfahani et al., 2019). The themes in Q1 are both well-matured and crucial for the structuring of the research field, including the obvious ESG, CSR, and SRI, considering that ESG was born out of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) (Gao et al., 2021) and further evolved from CSR (Singhania & Saini, 2021). Themes in Q2 have well-matured internal links but insubstantial external links and are of minimal importance; themes such as ESG factors, idiosyncratic risk, and materiality fall under this category. Themes in the Q3 are both weakly developed and marginal, primarily constituting either emerging or declining themes, such as ESG Investing (Chen & Mussalli, 2020; Townsend, 2020), Portfolio Theory, Portfolio Construction (Alessandrini & Jondeau, 2020; Schmidt, 2020), etc. These seem to be the emerging themes and, therefore, relevant for future research. ESG issues have recently been successfully adopted in mainstream finance. ESG investing is a way to invest that combines social and/or environmental benefits with financial returns, linking together social, ethical, environmental, and economic concerns (Brzeszczyński & McIntosh, 2014). Consequently, publicly held firms are increasingly being evaluated for environmental, social, and governance factors and a considerable body of research has emerged to investigate the implications of such assessments on share performance and investments (Díaz & Escribano, 2021; Shanaev & Ghimire, 2022). Alessandrini and Jondeau (2020) found that ESG score-based exclusion improved the ratings of otherwise typical portfolios while leaving their risk-adjusted performance the same. According to Jain et al. (2019), there is no noticeable performance variation between a sustainable index portfolio and a traditional index portfolio, making the former a good substitute. ESG investing and portfolio construction based on sustainability concerns are gaining traction as investors demand long-term returns in harmony with the environment (OECD, 2021).

Figure 7.

Thematic mapping of authors’ keywords.

Themes in Q4 are essential for a research field but not developed; this quadrant comprises sustainability, environmental, and social issues. In the mapping, corporate social responsibility appeared under the basic theme, but it was so because numerous studies had used the acronym “CSR” as a keyword. Based on the mapping, the research focus could be directed to “Financial Performance,” “Integrated Reporting,” and “ESG disclosure” as these themes are slowly moving toward high centrality, high density, or both. “Sustainability” can also be a focus of research as it is an important topic in the field but has not been developed. The argument regarding sustainability metrics and performance is far from complete. Elkington (1998) states that sustainability at the firm or industry level is interpreted as CSR. Aras and Crowther (2008) outlined environmental effects, societal influence, organizational culture, and financial sustainability as the four dimensions of corporate sustainability. Before 2010, most sustainability studies (e.g., Dyllick & Hockerts, 2002) only recognized two dimensions—environment and society—but there has been an increase in sustainability research that takes a three-dimensional approach with respect to environmental, social, and governance aspects. The widely accepted Global Reporting Initiative framework, however, treats governance as a subset of economy with environmental and social factors being treated separately.

Most Influential Studies

The bibliometric analysis also assists in identifying research publications in databases that have had a substantial influence on a particular area or discipline under investigation. Citation analysis determined the influence of a work by counting how many times it had been quoted in other studies (Ding & Cronin, 2011).

Table 7 presents the list of the top 20 ranking publications receiving the highest number of citations from other articles in the WoS and Scopus databases. The research content of the studies presented in Table 7 is extensive, with a major focus on CSR, corporate governance, integrated reporting, funds, ESG, and corporate performance (firm value, financial performance, investment, and stock returns). Interestingly, many of the most cited articles, 10 out of 20 (50%), were focused on CSR and governance in various forms, which seemed natural as both topics had been very popular among researchers for decades and gradually came under the ambit of the ESG concept. Moreover, these were still areas of focus that had been independently researched. Cheng et al. (2013) extended the knowledge base by investigating the relationship between CSR performance (predictor variable) and improved financial access. The results confirmed that this relationship was driven by both the environmental and social dimensions of CSR. This study considered environmental, social, and governance as the different dimensions to evaluate CSR performance. Nevertheless, with progress in the field, the social dimension has embraced CSR under its purview (Galbreath, 2012). This study also highlighted the intertwined nature of the literature on ESG and CSR, which consequently resonated with the emergence of CSR as a dominant keyword and subject of study in the analysis of thematic mapping and trending topics. Johnson and Greening (1999) had advanced work in the corporate social performance area from a corporate governance perspective to scrutinize the impact of corporate governance and ownership structure on corporate social performance (explained variable). Most cited articles dealing with ESG distinctively were published after 2016, which implies that quality research is being produced recently on ESG, and the area is still considered in its rudimentary stage. Therefore, this study foresees an expansion of the depth and breadth of ESG and related fields in the future.

Table 7.

The Top Twenty Significant Journal Articles in the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Fields Based on Citations (1991–2020).

Rank	Title	Journal	Authors	Year	Local citations	Global citations
1	Corporate Social Responsibility and Access to Finance	Strategic Management Journal	Cheng B., Ioannou I., & Serafeim G.	2013	39	822
2	The Effects of Corporate Governance and Institutional Ownership Types on Corporate Social Performance.	The Academy of Management Journal	Johnson R. A., & Greening D. W.	1999	23	821
3	Determinants of the Adoption of Sustainability Assurance Statements: An International Investigation.	Business Strategy and the Environment	Kolk A. & Perego P.	2010	12	281
4	The Causal Effect of Corporate Governance on Corporate Social Responsibility	Journal of Business Ethics	Jo H., Harjoto M.A.	2012	12	339
5	ESG in Focus: The Australian Evidence.	Journal of Business Ethics	Galbreath J.	2013	12	74
6	The Role of the Board in the Dissemination of Integrated Corporate Social Reporting.	Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management	Frias-Aceituno J. V., Rodriguez-Ariza L., & Garcia-Sanchez I.	2013	12	257
7	Corporate Sustainable Development: Is “Integrated Reporting” a Legitimation Strategy?	Business Strategy and the Environment	Lai A., Melloni G., & Stacchezzini, R.	2016	12	98
8	Socially Responsible Funds and Market Crises.	Journal of Banking & Finance	Nofsinger J., & Varma A.	2014	11	132
9	The Wages of Social Responsibility—Where Are They? A Critical Review of ESG Investing.	Review of Financial Economics	Halbritter G., & Dorfleitner G.	2015	11	67
10	Enhancing Market Valuation of ESG Performance: Is Integrated Reporting Keeping its Promise?	Business Strategy and the Environment	Mervelskemper L. & Streit D.	2017	11	68
11	Corporate Social Responsibility and Eurozone Corporate Bonds: The Moderating Role of Country Sustainability.	Journal of Banking & Finance	Stellner C., Klein C., & Zwergel B.	2015	10	71
12	On the Validity of Environmental Performance Metrics.	Journal of Business Ethics	Semenova N., Hassel L.G.	2015	9	62
13	ESG Integration and the Investment Management Process: Fundamental Investing Reinvented.	Journal of Business Ethics	van Duuren E., Plantinga A. & Scholtens B.	2016	9	80
14	Sensitive Industries Produce Better ESG Performance: Evidence from Emerging Markets.	Journal of Cleaner Production	Garcia A. S., Mendes-Da-Silva W., & Orsato R. J.	2017	9	80
15	Environmental, Social, and Governance Transparency and Firm Value.	Business Strategy and the Environment	Yu E. P. Y., Guo C. Q., & Luu B. V.	2018	9	41
16	Why and How Investors Use ESG Information: Evidence from a Global Survey.	Financial Analysts Journal	Amel-Zadeh A. & Serafeim G.	2018	9	83
17	Stakeholder Engagement, Corporate Social Responsibility and Integrated Reporting: An Exploratory Study.	Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management	Sierra-García, L., Zorio-Grima, A., & García-Benau, M. A.	2015	8	90
18	Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance: A Non-Linear and Disaggregated Approach.	Economic Modelling	Nollet, J., Filis, G., & Mitrokostas, E.	2016	8	127
19	Integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Disclosure for a Sustainable Development: An Australian Study.	Business Strategy and the Environment	Lokuwaduge, C. S. D. S., & Heenetigala, K.	2017	8	70
20	Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Profiles, Stock Returns, and Financial Policy: Australian Evidence.	International Review of Finance	Limkriangkrai, M., Koh, S., & Durand, R. B.	2017	8	29

Concluding Remarks and Future Research Directions

This study seeks to provide a bibliometric analysis of the evolution of ESG research and related fields. Although there was a large body of literature on this topic, this study found an absence of adequate bibliometric analysis. One prior bibliometric study employing the Scopus database was found, but its unsatisfactory data querying and cleaning process provided scope for further research. A manual review of abstracts while using bibliometric software is strongly recommended because its absence raises questions about the reliability of the results. The study revealed that the literature was diversified globally and spread across 61 countries on different continents; however, studies in developed nations, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Australia, Germany, and Canada, among others, were more common. A viable explanation for the same could be that since these developed nations were the pioneers of various mandatory and voluntary ESG-related laws and provisions, the outcome seemed justified (CarrotsandSticks.net).² There also appears to be more research emerging from developing economies, such as China, India, Malaysia, etc., post-adoption of mandatory and voluntary codes for business responsibility reports/sustainability reports/integrated reports.

Bibliometric analysis helps scholars identify academic subfields and similar areas as well as assists them in deciding on research topics and academic directions. It is likely that the research community will become increasingly dispersed globally, with more cross-border collaboration projected in the future. This study corroborates the claim that ESG research has become widespread worldwide. Additionally, unlike in many other fields, researchers from non-Western and Asian nations, such as China, India, South Korea, and Malaysia, seem to have a substantial share in this field.³

Finally, based on these findings, this study provided an outline of the ESG field. This report provides a better understanding of the evolution of the field by examining the most important previous and contemporary research themes. Author citation analysis aided in identifying the significant academic participants in the domain. The insights gained from this work can help researchers identify subjects, agendas, research orientations, and future collaboration opportunities in this discipline.

Through the framework of this bibliometric review, the development of academic discourse offers potential research avenues in the areas of finance and management as well as from an interdisciplinary perspective. As a result, several research questions for future research have been highlighted in Table 8.

Table 8.

Future Research Questions.

Research theme	Future research questions	Author(s)/year
ESG investing and portfolio construction	How does perception, such as trust in the mutual fund company, goodwill of the board, etc., influence the decisions of retail investors given the apparent prevalence of greenwashing?	Pizzetti et al., 2019
	How should the ESG factors be incorporated into the creditworthiness evaluation procedure of entities along with financial factors?	Erragragui, 2018
	How do psychological factors like ethics, behavioral biases, climate change realization, ESG awareness, or financial literacy impact portfolio construction?	Carlsson Hauff & Nilsson, 2022
Business strategy paradigm shift: From CSR to ESG sustainability	In the context of ESG performance, how can we expand the current theoretical framework (agency, social network, resource-based view, stakeholder theories) of ESG adoption?	Di Tommaso & Thornton, 2020
	How does the introduction of differing ESG guidelines at the country level impact foreign direct investments into a country?	Authors’ view
	How can the business models of corporations be adapted to the transitions in a sustainable economy?	Authors’ view
ESG factors	What new dimensions of sustainability can be ascertained, apart from environmental, social, and governance (ESG)?	Esteban-Sanchez et al., 2017
ESG factors	What new social and ethical parameters can be used to evaluate the corporate social performance of corporates?	Soana, 2011; Kumar & Srivastava, 2022
Integrated reporting	How should the administration, control, management, and reporting systems inside an organization be modified to account for both financial and non-financial concerns?	Arvidsson & Dumay, 2022
New governance requirements	What expertise in climate change would board members need to incorporate such concerns in the running of business firms?	Ben-Amar & McIlkenny, 2015
	How does the board network centrality affect the ESG performance of a company?	Harjoto & Wang, 2020a, 2020b
	How does gender diversity on the board affect the ESG disclosure of corporate entities?	Aabo & Giorici, 2022
	How does the composition of the board influence the level of ESG disclosure?	Suttipun, 2021

This study, like any other academic study, has certain limitations as well. First, to find and extract articles from databases, this research employed the keywords “ESG” and “Environmental Social Governance” alone. Other related studies that did not contain these keywords may have been overlooked. Additionally, only studies written in English were evaluated, and publications in all other languages were beyond the scope of this study. Furthermore, scientific databases such as the WoS and Scopus were not created solely for bibliometric studies and hence may hold inaccuracies, which will inevitably impair any analysis based on such data.

Footnotes

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Editage () for English language editing.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

Aabo

Giorici

I. C.

(2022). Do female CEOs matter for ESG scores? Global Finance Journal, 2022, Article 100722. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfj.2022.100722

Agbo

F. J.

Oyelere

S. S.

Suhonen

Tukiainen

(2021). Scientific production and thematic breakthroughs in smart learning environments: A bibliometric analysis. Smart Learning Environments, 8(1), Article 145. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-020-00145-4

Aguilera

R. V.

Jackson

(2003). The cross-national diversity of corporate governance: Dimensions and determinants. The Academy of Management Review, 28(3), Article 447. https://doi.org/10.2307/30040732

Albitar

Abdoush

Hussainey

(2022). Do corporate governance mechanisms and ESG disclosure drive CSR narrative tones? International Journal of Finance & Economics, 2022, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.2625

Alda

Vicente

(2021). Are socially responsible investment funds seasonal? Applied Economics Letters, 1, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2021.1999895

Alessandrini

Jondeau

(2020). ESG investing: From sin stocks to smart beta. The Journal of Portfolio Management, 46(3), 75–94. https://doi.org/10.3905/jpm.2020.46.3.075

Amel-Zadeh

Serafeim

(2018). Why and how investors use ESG information: Evidence from a global survey. Financial Analysts Journal, 74(3), 87–103. https://doi.org/10.2469/faj.v74.n3.2

Aras

Crowther

(2008). Developing sustainable reporting standards. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 9(1), 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1108/09675420810886097

Archambault

Vignola-Gagné

Côté

Larivière

Gingrasb

(2006). Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases. Scientometrics, 68(3), 329–342. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0115-z

10.

Arvidsson

Dumay

(2022). Corporate ESG reporting quantity, quality and performance: Where to now for environmental policy and practice? Business Strategy and the Environment, 31(3), 1091–1110. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2937

11.

Aydın

N. S.

Rainer

(2020). Asset-backed stable numéraire approach for sustainable valuation. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 360–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1769983

12.

Baker

H. K.

Kumar

Pandey

(2021). Forty years of the journal of futures markets: A bibliometric overview. Journal of Futures Markets, 41(7), 1027–1054. https://doi.org/10.1002/fut.22211

13.

Bakkalbasi

Bauer

Glover

Wang

(2006). Three options for citation tracking: Google scholar, scopus and Web of science. Biomedical Digital Libraries, 3(1), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-5581-3-7

14.

Baraibar-Diez

Odriozola

(2019). CSR committees and their effect on ESG performance in UK, France, Germany, and Spain. Sustainability, 11(18), Article 5077. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11185077

15.

Ben-Amar

McIlkenny

(2015). Board effectiveness and the voluntary disclosure of climate change information. Business Strategy and the Environment, 24(8), 704–719. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1840

16.

Bianchi

R. J.

Drew

M. E.

Walk

A. N.

(2010). On the responsible investment disclosure practices of the world’s largest pension funds. Accounting Research Journal, 23(3), 302–318. https://doi.org/10.1108/10309611011092619

17.

Boeninger

(1991). Governance and development: Issues and constraints. The World Bank Economic Review, 5(suppl 1), 267–288. https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/5.suppl_1.267

18.

Browne

M. N.

Haas

P. F.

(1974). Social responsibility: The uncertain hypothesis. MSU Business Topics, 22, 47–51.

19.

Brzeszczyński

McIntosh

(2014). Performance of portfolios composed of British SRI stocks. Journal of Business Ethics, 120(3), 335–362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1541-x

20.

Buallay

(2019). Between cost and value. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 20(4), 481–496. https://doi.org/10.1108/jaar-12-2017-0137

21.

Buallay

Fadel

S. M.

Al-Ajmi

J. Y.

Saudagaran

(2020). Sustainability reporting and performance of MENA banks: Is there a trade-off? Measuring Business Excellence, 24(2), 197–221. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe-09-2018-0078

22.

Buallay

A. M.

Abu Wadi

R. M.

Hassan

A. A.

Kukreja

(2020). Evaluating ESG disclosures of Islamic banks: Evidence from the organization of Islamic cooperation members. International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 14(3), Article 266. https://doi.org/10.1504/ijisd.2020.10028979

23.

Burchi

Włodarczyk

(2020). ‘Best in class’ socially responsible investment. The actual performance evaluation between the US and Europe. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 275–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1742012

24.

Business Council for Sustainable Development, Deloitte & Touche, & International Institute for Sustainable Development . (1992). Business strategy for sustainable development: Leadership and accountability for the '90s. International Institute for Sustainable Development.

25.

Caglio

Melloni

Perego

(2019). Informational content and assurance of textual disclosures: Evidence on integrated reporting. European Accounting Review, 29(1), 55–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2019.1677486

26.

Carlsson Hauff

Nilsson

(2022). Is ESG mutual fund quality in the eye of the beholder? An experimental study of investor responses to ESG fund strategies. Business Strategy and the Environment, Advance online Publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3181

27.

Carroll

A. B.

(1999). Corporate social responsibility. Business & Society, 38(3), 268–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/000765039903800303

28.

Chen

Mussalli

(2020). An integrated approach to quantitative ESG investing. The Journal of Portfolio Management, 46(3), 65–74. https://doi.org/10.3905/jpm.2020.46.3.065

29.

Chen

Shi

Zhao

(2022). Investment in renewable energy resources, sustainable financial inclusion and energy efficiency: A case of US economy. Resources Policy, 77, 102680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2022.102680

30.

Cheng

Ioannou

Serafeim

(2013). Corporate social responsibility and access to finance. Strategic Management Journal, 35(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2131

31.

Christofi

Sisaye

(2012). Corporate sustainability: Historical development and reporting practices. Management Research Review, 35(2), 157–172. https://doi.org/10.1108/01409171211195170

32.

Clarkson

M. E.

(1995). A stakeholder framework for analyzing and evaluating corporate social performance. Academy of Management Review, 20(1), 92–117. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9503271994

33.

Cobo

López-Herrera

Herrera-Viedma

Herrera

(2011). An approach for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the fuzzy sets theory field. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 146–166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2010.10.002

34.

Craig

C. D.

(2021). Sustainable finance starts with data. World Economic Forum.

35.

Crifo

Forget

V. D.

(2013). Think global, invest responsible: Why the private equity industry goes green. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(1), 21–48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1443-y

36.

Dalton

D. R.

Daily

C. M.

Johnson

J. L.

Ellstrand

A. E.

(1999). Number of directors and financial performance: A meta-analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 42(6), 674–686. https://doi.org/10.5465/256988

37.

Díaz

Escribano

(2021). Sustainability premium in energy bonds. Energy Economics, 95, Article 105113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105113

38.

Dicuonzo

Donofrio

Ranaldo

Dell’Atti

(2022). The effect of innovation on environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. Meditari Accountancy Research.

39.

Ding

Cronin

(2011). Popular and/or prestigious? Measures of scholarly esteem. Information Processing & Management, 47(1), 80–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2010.01.002

40.

Di Tommaso

Thornton

(2020). Do ESG scores effect bank risk taking and value? Evidence from European banks. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 27(5), 2286–2298. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1964

41.

Docekalova

M. P.

Kocmanova

(2015). Evaluation of the effectiveness of manufacturing companies by financial and non-financial indicators. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 213, 491–496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.439

42.

Donthu

Kumar

Mukherjee

Pandey

Lim

W. M.

(2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.04.070

43.

D’Orazio

Löwenstein

(2020). Mobilising investments in renewable energy in Germany: Which role for public investment banks? Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 451–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1777062

44.

Dyllick

Hockerts

(2002). Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Business Strategy and the Environment, 11(2), 130–141. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.323

45.

Eccles

N. S.

Viviers

(2011). The origins and meanings of names describing investment practices that integrate a consideration of ESG issues in the academic literature. Journal of Business Ethics, 104(3), 389–402. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0917-7

46.

Elango

Rajendran

(2012). Authorship trends and collaboration pattern in the marine sciences literature: A scientometric study. International Journal of Information Dissemination Technology 2(3), 166–169.

47.

Elkington

(1998). Partnerships from cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of 21st-century business. Environmental Quality Management, 8(1), 37–51. https://doi.org/10.1002/tqem.3310080106

48.

Ellegaard

Wallin

J. A.

(2015). The bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: How great is the impact? Scientometrics, 105(3), 1809–1831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1645-z

49.

Erragragui

(2018). Do creditors price firms’ environmental, social and governance risks? Research in International Business and Finance, 45, 197–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2017.07.151

50.

Esteban-Sanchez

de la Cuesta-Gonzalez

Paredes-Gazquez

J. D.

(2017). Corporate social performance and its relation with corporate financial performance: International evidence in the banking industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 162, 1102–1110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.06.127

51.

Friedman

(1970). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance, 173–178. 173–178. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70818-6_14

52.

Wright

Blazenko

(2020). Ethical investing has No portfolio performance cost. Research in International Business and Finance, 52, Article 101117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101117

53.

Galbreath

(2012). ESG in focus: The Australian evidence. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(3), 529–541. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1607-9

54.

Gao

Meng

Liu

Farrukh

(2021). Mapping and clustering analysis on environmental, social and governance field a bibliometric analysis using scopus. Sustainability, 13(13), Article 7304. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137304

55.

Girerd-Potin

Jimenez-Garcès

Louvet

(2013). Which dimensions of social responsibility concern financial investors? Journal of Business Ethics, 121(4), 559–576. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1731-1

56.

Granda-Orive

J. I.

Alonso-Arroyo

García-Río

Solano-Reina

Jiménez-Ruiz

C. A.

Aleixandre-Benavent

(2013). Ciertas ventajas de Scopus sobre Web of Science en un análisis bibliométrico sobre tabaquismo. Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 36(2), Article e011. https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2013.2.941

57.

Grewal

Serafeim

(2020). Research on corporate sustainability: Review and directions for future research. Foundations and Trends® in Accounting, 14(2), 73–127. https://doi.org/10.1561/1400000061

58.

Griffin

J. J.

Mahon

J. F.

(1997). The corporate social performance and corporate financial performance debate. Business & Society, 36(1), 5–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/000765039703600102

59.

Harjoto

M. A.

Wang

(2020). Board of directors network centrality and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society, 20(6), 965–985. https://doi.org/10.1108/cg-10-2019-0306

60.

Hedberg

C. J.

von Malmborg

(2003). The Global Reporting Initiative and corporate sustainability reporting in Swedish companies. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 10(3), 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.38

61.

Jain

Sharma

G. D.

Srivastava

(2019). Can sustainable investment yield better financial returns: A comparative study of esg indices and MSCI indices. Risks, 7(1), Article 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/risks7010015

62.

Jelvehgaran Esfahani

Tavasoli

Jabbarzadeh

(2019). Big data and social media: A scientometrics analysis. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 2019, 145–164. https://doi.org/10.5267/j.ijdns.2019.2.007

63.

Jia

Zhou

Allaway

A. W.

(2018). Understanding the evolution of consumer psychology research: A bibliometric and network analysis. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 17(5), 491–502. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.1734

64.

Harjoto

M. A.

(2011). The causal effect of corporate governance on corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 106(1), 53–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-1052-1

65.

Johnson

R. A.

Greening

D. W.

(1999). The effects of corporate governance and institutional ownership types on corporate social performance. Academy of Management Journal, 42(5), 564–576. https://doi.org/10.5465/256977

66.

Kanamura

(2020). A model of price correlations between clean energy indices and energy commodities. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 319–359. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1753434

67.

Kaur

Chaudhary

(2022). Relationship between macroeconomic variables and sustainable stock market index: An empirical analysis. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 2022, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2022.2073957

68.

Kolk

Perego

(2010). Determinants of the adoption of sustainability assurance statements: An international investigation. Business Strategy and the Environment. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.643

69.

Koseoglu

M. A.

(2016). Mapping the institutional collaboration network of strategic management research: 1980–2014. Scientometrics, 109(1), 203–226. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1894-5

70.

Kumar

Sharma

Rao

Lim

W. M.

Mangla

S. K.

(2022). Past, present, and future of sustainable finance: Insights from big data analytics through machine learning of scholarly research. Annals of Operations Research 2022, 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04410-8

71.

Kumar

Srivastava

(2022). Trends in the thematic landscape of corporate social responsibility research: A structural topic modeling approach. Journal of Business Research, 150, 26–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.05.075

72.

Lau

C. K.

(2019). The economic consequences of business sustainability initiatives. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 36(4), 937–970. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-018-9623-7

73.

Linnenluecke

M. K.

(2022). Environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the context of multinational business research. Multinational Business Review, 30(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbr-11-2021-0148

74.

Mongeon

Paul-Hus

(2016). The journal coverage of Web of science and scopus: A comparative analysis. Scientometrics, 106(1), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1765-5

75.

Mukherjee

Sohrabji

(2022). Environmental regulation and export performance: Evidence from the USA. Eastern Economic Journal, 48(2), 198–225. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41302-022-00215-0

76.

OECD . (2021). ESG investing and climate transition: Market practices, issues and policy considerations, OECD. https://www.oecd.org/finance/ESG-investing-and-climatetransition-Market-practices-issues-and-policy-considerations.pdf

77.

Ouchen

(2021). Is the ESG portfolio less turbulent than a market benchmark portfolio? Risk Management, 24(1), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41283-021-00077-4

78.

Piao

Xie

Managi

(2022). Environmental, social, and corporate governance activities with employee psychological well-being improvement. BMC Public Health, 22(1), Article e12350. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12350-y

79.

Pizzetti

Gatti

Seele

(2019). Firms talk, suppliers walk: Analyzing the locus of greenwashing in the blame game and Introducing ‘vicarious greenwashing. Journal of Business Ethics, 170(1), 21–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04406-2

80.

Rajesh

(2020). Exploring the sustainability performances of firms using environmental, social, and governance scores. Journal of Cleaner Production, 247, Article 119600. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119600

81.

Ramos-Rodríguez

A. R.

Ruíz-Navarro

(2004). Changes in the intellectual structure of strategic management research: A bibliometric study of the strategic management journal, 1980–2000. Strategic Management Journal, 25(10), 981–1004. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.397

82.

Richardson

B. J.

(2009). Keeping ethical investment ethical: Regulatory issues for investing for sustainability. Journal of Business Ethics, 87(4), 555–572. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9958-y

83.

Riedl

(2020). Why market actors fuel the carbon bubble. The agency, governance, and incentive problems that distort corporate climate risk management. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 407–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1769986

84.

Rompotis

G. G.

(2022). The ESG ETFs in the UK. Journal of Asset Management, 23(2), 114–129. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41260-021-00251-z

85.

Rosen

B. N.

Sandler

D. M.

Shani

(1991). Social issues and socially responsible investment behavior: A preliminary empirical investigation. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 25(2), 221–234. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6606.1991.tb00003.x

86.

Rubtsov

Shen

(2022). Dynamic portfolio decisions with climate risk and model uncertainty. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 2022, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2022.2045890

87.

Schmidt

A. B.

(2020). Optimal ESG portfolios: An example for the dow jones index. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 535–537. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1783180

88.

Schueth

(2003). Socially responsible investing in the United States. Journal of Business Ethics, 43(3), 189–194. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022981828869

89.

Secinaro

Brescia

Calandra

Biancone

(2020). Employing bibliometric analysis to identify suitable business models for electric cars. Journal of Cleaner Production, 264, Article 121503. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121503

90.

Seuring

Müller

(2008). From a literature review to a conceptual framework for sustainable supply chain management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16(15), 1699–1710. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2008.04.020

91.

Shanaev

Ghimire

(2022). When ESG meets AAA: The effect of ESG rating changes on stock returns. Finance Research Letters, 46, Article 102302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2021.102302

92.

Shanmugam

Chidambaram

Parayitam

(2022). Effect of financial knowledge and information behavior on sustainable investments: Evidence from India. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 1, Article 24. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2022.2073958

93.

Shareholders Are Getting Serious About Sustainability . (2020, November 24). Harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2019/05/the-investor-revolution

94.

Sievänen

Rita

Scholtens

(2013). The drivers of responsible investment: The case of European pension funds. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(1), 137–151. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1514-0

95.

Singh

Singhania

Aggrawal

(2021). Gender diversity on corporate boards: Review and future research agenda through bibliometric mapping. Corporate Governance and Sustainability Review, 5(3), 57–72. https://doi.org/10.22495/cgsrv5i3p5

96.

Singhania

Saini

(2021). Institutional framework of ESG disclosures: Comparative analysis of developed and developing countries. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 2021, 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2021.1964810

97.

Soana

M. G.

(2011). The relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance in the banking sector. Journal of Business Ethics, 104(1), 133–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0894-x

98.

Spangenberg

J. H.

(2004). Reconciling sustainability and growth: Criteria, indicators, policies. Sustainable Development, 12(2), 74–86. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.229

99.

Suttipun

(2021). The influence of board composition on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure of Thai listed companies. International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 18(4), 391–402. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41310-021-00120-6

100.

Tamimi

Sebastianelli

(2017). Transparency among S&P 500 companies: An analysis of ESG disclosure scores. Management Decision, 55(8), 1660–1680. https://doi.org/10.1108/md-01-2017-0018

101.

Townsend

(2020). From SRI to ESG: The origins of socially responsible and sustainable investing. The Journal of Impact and ESG Investing, 1(1), 10–25. https://doi.org/10.3905/jesg.2020.1.1.010

102.

Tunger

Eulerich

(2018). Bibliometric analysis of corporate governance research in German-speaking countries: Applying bibliometrics to business research using a custom-made database. Scientometrics, 117(3), 2041–2059. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2919-z

103.

Van den Brink

T. W. M.

van der Woerd

(2004). Industry specific sustainability benchmarks: An ECSF pilot bridging corporate sustainability with social responsible investments. Journal of Business Ethics, 55(2), 187–203. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-004-1901-2

104.

Varsei

Soosay

Fahimnia

Sarkis

(2014). Framing sustainability performance of supply chains with multidimensional indicators. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 19(3), 242–257. https://doi.org/10.1108/scm-12-2013-0436

105.

Wang

Elfaki

K. E.

Zhao

Shang

Khan

(2022). International trade and consumption-based carbon emissions: Does energy efficiency and financial risk ensure sustainable environment? Sustainable development, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2320

106.

Wang

C. N.

Larsen

M. L.

Wang

(2020). Addressing the missing linkage in sustainable finance: The ‘SDG Finance Taxonomy. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1796101

107.

Wang

Coffey

B. S.

(1992). Board composition and corporate philanthropy. Journal of Business Ethics, 11(10), 771–778. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00872309

108.

Woods

Urwin

(2010). Putting sustainable investing into practice: A governance framework for pension funds. Journal of Business Ethics, 92(S1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0631-x

109.

Yamahaki

Felsberg

A. V.

Köberle

A. C.

Gurgel

A. C.

Stewart-Richardson

(2020). Structural and specific barriers to the development of a green bond market in Brazil. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(2), 389–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2020.1769985

110.

Zhang

Wang

Zhou

(2020). Study on sustainable urbanization literature based on Web of science, scopus, and China national knowledge infrastructure: A scientometric analysis in CiteSpace. Journal of Cleaner Production, 264, Article 121537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121537

111.

Zhao

Shang

Yang

Shahzad

(2022a). Green economic growth and its inherent driving factors in Chinese cities: Based on the Metafrontier-global-SBM super-efficiency DEA model. Gondwana Research, 106, 315–328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2022.01.013

112.

Zhao

Ramzan

Sengupta

Deep Sharma

Shahzad

Cui

(2022b). Impacts of bilateral trade on energy affordability and accessibility across Europe: Does economic globalization reduce energy poverty? Energy and Buildings, 262, 112023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.112023

113.

Zhao

Shang

Xia

Shahzad

(2022c). Does Carbon Trading Lead to Green Technology Innovation: Recent Evidence From Chinese Companies in Resource-Based Industries. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2022.3186905

114.

Zupic

Čater

(2014). Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organizational Research Methods, 18(3), 429–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114562629