Research progress and prospect of environmental, social and governance: A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) has become a rapidly evolving and important topic as the society attaches importance to ecological and environmental issues. In order to more systematically elucidate the evolutionary trend, status quo, hotspots and overall structure of research in the field of ESG, we searched based on the Web of Science core ensemble database, and comprehensively utilized bibliometrics and content analysis to analyze and mine the data of research on the theme of ESG from 1991 to 2023. The results of the study show that: (1) ESG research is gradually attracting attention from all countries, with a steady growth in results, rich and diversified research, and the main research power is concentrated in mainstream developed countries. (2) The proportion of funded research in the field of ESG is large, and countries are deepening their research on ESG one after another. There are great research prospects and opportunities in this field in the future. (3) The level of ESG research has gradually deepened from theoretical research to multidisciplinary cross-application research. The issues of "responsible investment", "corporate social responsibility" and "sustainable development" are the main themes of ESG research. Meanwhile, "ESG investment" and "ESG disclosure" are cutting-edge trends in ESG research. (4) Future ESG research may focus more on social latitude (S) versus governance latitude (G). This study facilitates the investigation of key contributors in the environmental, social and governance fields at micro, meso and macro levels, and provides insights into the structure and direction of knowledge in the ESG field for future research.