Mapping the Regulatory Quality in the nexus between Green Finance and Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

The green finance instruments are seen as essential tool for an environmental sustainability but its global application appears to be varied depending on institutional setup. This paper systematically reviewed the literature and used bibliometric analysis to examine the central moderating role of the quality of regulation in the green finance – environment sustainability linkage. By assessing 163 papers published from 2004 to 2026, this study explores an intellectual mapping, theory foundations and dynamics, and future development path of this growing research area. Our results find a rapid rise of academic interest from 2022 onwards on this field, which are related to modern ESG regulation development, but it also appears that current literature has suffered from a conceptual disorder of governance concepts and obvious geographic imbalance as empirical studies are concentrated in China and some advanced countries. The whole literature shows that good quality of regulation which implies policy consistency, strong anti-greenwashing controls and unified sustainability disclosure standards is a prerequisite to enable green financial instruments being translated into real environmental impact. Finally, this paper draws a future research agenda on theoretical convergence on governance indices and empirical explorations in developing economies.