Exploring the research situation of carbon finance: A scientometric analysis on Web of Science database

As the impact of climate change emerges gradually, an increasing number of countries realize the importance of administering and limiting the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. The notion of carbon finance is put forward in this context. This paper analyzes 1513 articles related to carbon finance from the Web of Science database. We first conduct statistical analysis where we ascertain the overall growth trend of research, publication sources, research regions, research institutions and core authors. Then, we carry out cluster analysis and construct the co-citation networks to determine the research hotspots, landmarks, turning points and the collaborative relationship among authors. We also build a time zone chart, showing the research focus at different historical stages. This research provides a systematic and comprehensive understanding of the research status of carbon finance and offers that future research opportunities lie in distributional effects and closed-loop supply chains.