Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends in Carbon Finance and Carbon Markets: A Comprehensive Overview

The rapid development of industrialization has brought about many environmental problems, such as pollution emissions (Lee and Chang 2008; Shahbaz et al. 2013) and resource depletion (Jayanthakumaran et al. 2012; Hanif 2018). At the same time, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities has led to global climate change, which is one of the important reasons for it (Wang et al. 2022). Environmental problems today have already begun to threaten human health, survival, and development (Klenert et al. 2020; Settele et al. 2020; Sharma et al. 2021). As global climate warming intensifies, countries are taking corresponding measures to address this crisis and have committed to reducing carbon emissions to tackle climate change. China, as a major emitter of carbon, proposed the targets of 'peak carbon emissions' and 'carbon neutrality' in 2020. In order to mitigate climate change, countries around the world are taking corresponding measures to steer existing economic development models towards low-carbon directions (Fu 2020; Guo et al. 2021; Song et al. 2021), all of which face the goals of carbon reduction and low-carbon economic development. Carbon taxation and carbon trading are effective measures to achieve this goal, with the latter being internationally recognized as a choice (Broh￩ et al. 2012; Haites 2018).

The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are of great significance for the emergence of carbon finance and carbon markets (Zhang 2016; Zhou and Li 2019). Carbon finance can provide financial support for carbon reduction by national governments and promote resource optimization allocation among countries. It is a market-based solution aimed at reducing the negative impacts of climate change through carbon emission trading mechanisms. It also refers to financial activities that promote Certified Emission Reductions (CER), such as investment and financing for CER (IFCER) and carbon emission trading (CET) (Borghesi et al. 2015). As a financial tool and means, carbon finance strongly promotes the implementation of carbon reduction plans by national governments. The carbon market is the place for carbon financial transactions, including operational mechanism design and policy system establishment (Zhang et al. 2023; Zhu and Gao 2023; Su et al. 2023). As of 2023, a total of 28 carbon markets are in operation worldwide, covering 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions and involving nearly one-third of the global population.

Carbon finance has become an important engine for the development of a green economy, providing crucial financing for renewable energy and green energy projects. More and more scholars are paying attention to the research on carbon finance and carbon markets, especially the importance of achieving energy economic transformation. The scope of related research, multi-level market structure, and diversity of financing are also becoming more mature (Mansanet-Bataller and Pardo 2008; Zhang and Wei 2010; Newell et al. 2014). Undoubtedly, this contributes to the increase in relevant literature. However, researchers' studies on carbon finance and carbon markets mainly focus on empirical and qualitative research, such as the development process of carbon emission trading markets (Christiansen and Wettestad 2003; Duan et al. 2014), pricing of carbon allowances and their derivatives (Reyes and Gilbertson 2010; Wang et al. 2018a), and risks in carbon markets (Feng et al. 2012; Zhu et al. 2019, 2022a). However, there is a lack of comprehensive review studies on carbon finance and carbon markets from the perspective of bibliometrics. Traditional review articles are also not effective in organizing, summarizing, and quantitatively analyzing the development of a specific field over a large and long-term investigation. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis of research on carbon finance and carbon markets using bibliometric analysis methods.

This study attempts to answer the following questions: RQ1. What are the publication trends of research on carbon finance and carbon markets? RQ2. Which journals contribute the most to research on carbon finance and carbon markets? RQ3. Which countries make the largest contributions to research on carbon finance and carbon markets? RQ4. What are the main topics of research on carbon finance and carbon markets? RQ5. How has research on carbon finance and carbon markets developed and evolved? RQ6. What are the future directions of research on carbon finance and carbon markets? The answers to these research questions are important for providing a comprehensive understanding of the field of research on carbon finance and carbon markets, which will help scholars determine where to focus their research efforts.

Although some studies have explored similar concepts, they only use one database, and the scope of topics and time span is relatively narrow. In view of this, this paper uses Citespace and Vosviewer software based on the Web of Science and Scopus databases to conduct a bibliometric analysis of past published articles, providing statistical and factual summaries of the research trends in carbon finance and carbon markets. The objectives of this study include: (1) identifying the publication trends of the literature, (2) determining the most influential journals in this research field, (3) identifying representative countries in this research field, (4) revealing the main research topics in this field, (5) summarizing the development process of this research based on the trend of research hotspots over time, and (6) identifying opportunities for future research on carbon finance and carbon markets.