Bibliometric Analysis of Green Bonds

The explosive growth in the number of green bond publications in recent years is attributed to the introduction of the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors (ESG), promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and global calls for a transition to a low-carbon economy. However, there is still a lack of a comprehensive and systematic research tracing the evolution of this field. Hence, the objective of this study is to explore the research trends in the scope of green bonds over the period of 1996 to March 12, 2021. We conducted a bibliometric analysis on data retrieved from Scopus database entailing contributions of 324 authors of 297 affiliations from 56 countries in the publication of 149 peer-reviewed articles in 85 journals. We employed various software and applications for the analysis of co-occurrence, citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-authorship, which led to the identification of the most influential articles, authors, sources, institutions, and countries among others. The findings of our analysis underpin the interdisciplinarity facet of green bond publications across sources of different concentrations such as energy and environment, sustainability, finance, and economics among others. Our findings revealed a significant growth of green bond publications in the last 5 years with a strong contribution from countries such as China, the USA, the UK, and Australia among others.