Mapping Trends in Green Finance: A Bibliometric and Topic Modeling Analysis

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric and topic modeling analysis of the academic literature on green and sustainable finance. Using 1372 peer-reviewed articles indexed in the Web of Science up to 2024, we identify key publication trends, influential authors, prominent journals, and thematic clusters shaping the field. The analysis reveals an exponential growth in publications since 2017 and highlights the dominance of journals such as Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment and Sustainability. Text mining techniques, including TF-IDF and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), are applied to abstracts to extract the most relevant terms and classify articles into four latent topics. The findings suggest a growing focus on the impact of green finance on carbon emissions, energy efficiency, and firm performance, particularly in the context of China. This study offers valuable insights for researchers and policymakers by mapping the intellectual structure and identifying emerging research frontiers in the rapidly evolving field of green finance.