Analysing the Research Development in Green Finance: Performance Analysis and Directions for Future Research

Financial institutions actively consider environmental performance as an important metric for investment evaluation and allocation of financial resources, which is prevalently known as ‘green finance’. The concept of green finance has received global recognition, as illustrated by the growing publications, yet there is a persistent need to synthesize the extant literature in this area to understand how green finance has developed as a distinctive and crucial body of knowledge. The present research aims to systematically review the scholarly articles on the green finance domain published from 1997 to 2024. Using the Scopus database and the SPAR-4-SLR framework, the current research integrates the bibliometric analysis along with a systematic literature review approach. The study discovers seven thematic areas that associate the green finance domain with distinctive knowledge clusters, such as (a) green investments, (b) green economic growth, (c) environmental performance, (d) green innovation, (e) corporate social responsibility, (f) climate risk management and (g) financial development. Such dispersed and multiple themes corroborate the multidimensional outlook of green finance and its universal applicability. Further, the study also describes theme-wise directions of future research to enhance the existing body of knowledge. Finally, the current research enumerates critical implications for academicians, practitioners and policymakers.