A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis in the Field of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) Between 2004 and 2021

Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) has attracted increasing research interest for sustainable management and decision-making in recent years. In order to further understand the research status and trend, the purpose of this study is to adopt bibliometric and visual methods to analyze the knowledge structure and the evolution path in the research field of ESG. Based on 1735 papers on ESG in the Web of Science Collection database from 2004 to 2021, this study uses CiteSpace and VOSviewer to present a bibliometric overview of publications, citation structure, authors, universities, countries/regions, journals, and keywords that work on this Topic. Results indicate that scholars are increasingly regarding ESG as an integrated sustainability analysis framework and paying more attention to the connection among its different dimensions. According to the growth trend, ESG may remain a hot research topic for the next few years. The USA is the most productive country followed by England and China. Journals on ESG research with higher effective factors have higher co-citation frequency and higher publications. Sustainable development, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, ESG, and ESG ratings as the research hotspots are presented. Additionally, this study provides an overview of the ESG research trends for future researchers. This may aid researchers in understanding current patterns and future study paths, allowing future authors to perform their studies more successfully.