ESG literature mapping: insights from bibliometric analysis

This study intends to examine and visually map the body of academic literature connected to the significant aspects of ESG from a bibliometric standpoint. The study sample examined 785 documents from the Scopus database covering over 295 different journals from 1992 to 2023. The Biblioshiny R package assessed influential research domains and employed sequential evaluation to determine the potential relationship between ESG and performance. Over the last decade, the literature on ESG performance has seen substantial growth. Our results affirm ESG's emergence in sustainable finance, evident in the rising trend of both publication numbers and total citations. The leading journal in terms of productivity is Sustainability (Switzerland). Buallay A, who regularly delivers varied research across many industries that investigate the influence of sustainability reporting emerges as the most impactful and noteworthy author in the field of ESG. The impact of ESG on performance, ESG investment, performance measurement, and corporate sustainability are the major themes, and the effect of ESG on funds’ performance and green technology innovation are the emerging themes in the domain. The result of the coupling analysis revealed six significant clusters of which three clusters, marked by high impact and centrality, encompass corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, and industrial performance. Conversely, the other three clusters are deemed low impact and centrality, covering environmental, social, and sustainable development concerns. The findings significantly enhance our comprehension of ESG and its relationship with performance, contributing to the effective functioning of capital markets in fostering sustainability and sustainable development. The study's practical implications are crucial, offering valuable insights and charting promising directions for future research.