Bibliometric analysis and systematic review of environmental, social, and governance disclosure papers: current topics and recommendations for future research

Abstract

This study analyzes the literature on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure by applying a bibliometric analysis of documents published in the Scopus database. The bibliometric analysis allows researchers to highlight the theoretical foundations of a specific research field, identify the main findings of previous studies, and determine future research ideas. This analysis was based on bibliometric authors’ citation analysis, bibliometric papers’ co-citation analysis, bibliometric references’ co-citation analysis, bibliometric journals’ co-citation analysis, co-occurrence keywords cartography analysis, trend and evolution analyses of ESG disclosure publications over the years, and qualitative content analysis. This study reviews 161 documents on ESG disclosure published in the Scopus database. Bibliometric analysis was conducted using VOSviewer, evolution analysis was performed using CiteSpace, and content analysis was performed using Wordstat. The study identified four major clusters: corporate social responsibility, corporate strategy, financial performance, and environmental economics. It also highlights the increasing number of citations and documents related to ESG disclosures. In addition, the journal ‘Business Strategy and the Environment’ significantly contributes to the ESG disclosure research field in terms of number of papers and citations. Additionally, this study highlights various future research opportunities in this field. The findings of this study have practical implications for ESG disclosure, such as the impact of integrating ESG into a company’s business strategy on corporate and financial policies. This study is the only one to review key topics on ESG disclosure that can be largely used for ESG practices. This study provides an overview of how the literature on ESG disclosure has developed, as well as a summary of the most influential authors along with countries, organizations, and journal sources. This offers the opportunity for future research to focus on this topic.