Purpose

This study aimed to quantify and map academic literature of ESG from a bibliometric perspective and to provide a comprehensive review of the recent literature published in the high-rated journal articles.

Design/methodology/approach

The study analyzed 867 and 388 documents from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) data respectively using bibliometric analysis. Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software was used for performance analysis and science mapping respectively. Further, manual content analysis of the 190 research articles published in the last five years was conducted.

Findings

The results demonstrate that ESG is an emerging domain in the field of sustainable finance as the number of publications and total citations are showing an upward trend. The top two journals in terms of productivity are the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment and Business Strategy and the Environment. The highest number of publications are from the United States and George Serafeim is the most influential author in the ESG domain. Further, the result of cluster analysis of bibliographic coupling reveals four intellectual themes, (1) ESG investing; (2) ESG disclosures and Integrated Reporting; (3) ESG performance and firm value and (4) Corporate Governance and ESG performance. The content analysis of the 190 high-quality journal articles presents the current 11 areas of research in ESG. The impact of ESG on firm value and ESG investment are the prominent themes, and the effect of ESG on the cost of capital and ESG audit and assurance are the emerging themes in this domain.

Research limitations/implications

The keyword search is solely focusing on the theme of the study. Further, other keywords such as Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate sustainability taken along with ESG may provide distinct results.

Practical implications

The study advances the understanding of the ESG domain by developing new possibilities to discover key research areas.

Originality/value

The present work provides a comprehensive and detailed bibliometric and content analysis of ESG literature. This study delineates the thorough literature review of journal articles published in the recent five years in high-rated journals.

中文翻译：

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绘制环境、社会和治理文献图：文献计量和内容分析

目的

本研究旨在从文献计量的角度对ESG学术文献进行量化和绘制图谱，并对近期发表在高评价期刊文章中的文献进行全面综述。

设计/方法论/途径

该研究使用文献计量分析分别分析了来自 Scopus 和 Web of Science (WoS) 数据的 867 篇和 388 篇文档。Biblioshiny 和 VOSviewer 软件分别用于性能分析和科学绘图。此外，还对过去五年发表的 190 篇研究论文进行了人工内容分析。

发现

结果表明，ESG是可持续金融领域的一个新兴领域，其出版物数量和总引用量均呈上升趋势。生产力方面排名前两位的期刊是《Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment》和《Business Strategy and the Environment》。出版物数量最多的是美国，George Serafeim 是 ESG 领域最有影响力的作者。此外，书目耦合的聚类分析结果揭示了四个知识主题：（1）ESG投资；(2) ESG披露和综合报告；(3) ESG 绩效和公司价值；(4) 公司治理和 ESG 绩效。对 190 篇高质量期刊文章的内容分析呈现了当前 ESG 的 11 个研究领域。ESG对公司价值的影响和ESG投资是突出的主题，ESG对资本成本的影响以及ESG审计和鉴证是该领域的新兴主题。

研究局限性/影响

关键词搜索仅关注研究主题。此外，企业社会责任和企业可持续发展等其他关键词与 ESG 结合起来可能会产生不同的结果。

实际影响

该研究通过开发发现关键研究领域的新可能性来增进对 ESG 领域的理解。

原创性/价值

目前的工作对 ESG 文献进行了全面、详细的文献计量和内容分析。这项研究对近五年在高评价期刊上发表的期刊文章进行了全面的文献综述。