Sustainable finance in focus: Global research patterns, hotspots, and future by a bibliometric study

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Abstract

Sustainable finance is crucial for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs (United Nations, 2023). Existing reviews still only partially cover the sustainable finance domain. This paper seeks to conduct a comprehensive review to offer an integrated understanding and performance of sustainable finance, thereby addressing the existing knowledge gap. The bibliometrics are used as a methodology in the analysis of the corpus of 893 academic research papers from Web of Science (WoS) for the period 2007 to 2022 regarding sustainable finance. The study identified the top metrics, including the best papers, journals, institutions, and countries that significantly contributed to the field of sustainable finance. The result shows sustainable finance and finance sustainability as the evolved subset, while climate finance and climate change adaptation were recognized as the emerging area of sustainable finance. Green bonds, renewable energy, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) appear as niche themes. Additionally, the review proposes advanced future research in sustainable finance, including the integration of sustainable finance and climate finance and the role of green bonds in accelerating renewable energy. This study presents an exhaustive analysis of 893 research articles. Overall, the study offers an integrated overview of the domain and outlines how research in sustainable finance has evolved over the last 15 years.

Keywords: Sustainable Finance, Green Finance, Bibliometric Analysis, Literature Review

Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization — V.P.; Methodology — V.P.; Formal Analysis — V.P.; Resources — R.R.K.; Data Curation — V.P. and R.R.K.; Validation — R.R.K.; Writing — Original Draft — V.P.; Writing – Review & Editing — V.P. and R.R.K.

Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

JEL Classification: G3, G39, M1, Q01

Received: 18.07.2025
Revised: 15.11.2025; 01.12.2025; 08.02.2026
Accepted: 26.02.2026
Published online: 27.02.2026

How to cite this paper: Pratap, V., & Kumar, R. R. (2026). Sustainable finance in focus: Global research patterns, hotspots, and future by a bibliometric study. Responsible Business Review, 2(1), 8–22. https://doi.org/10.22495/rbrv2i1p1