Impact Investing at the Crossroads of Sustainability: Mapping the Intellectual Landscape Through Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

In the context of the rising focus on sustainable development, impact investing is now emerging as a strategic mechanism to achieve social and environmental outcomes and benefits in addition to financial returns. With new fields in finance, management, sustainability, and public policy, the amount of scholarly work in the field is growing and requires a thorough examination of the intellectual evolution of the discipline and its new research trends. While systematic literature reviews on impact investing can be found, little focus has been put on quantitatively tracking the knowledge structure and thematic evolution of impact investing over time with bibliometric techniques. In order to fill this gap, the present study aims to map the intellectual field of impact investing by carrying out a detailed bibliometric analysis at the intersection of impact investing and sustainability. The information involved in the study is bibliographic data retrieved from the Scopus database, and it adopts the bibliometric methods already applied. The data is analysed using VOSviewer. Analysis includes: Publication trends; influential authors, journals, institutions, countries, and citation trends; and science-mapping measures such as co-authorship, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, and thematic evolution.

The analytical frameworks enable a structured analysis of the conceptual, social, and intellectual processes that have guided the evolution of the impact investing research field. The study will provide a comprehensive overview of impact investing scholarship development, identify emerging knowledge areas and collaboration networks, and identify research gaps concerning sustainability integration, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), sustainable finance, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles.