Mapping green banking research: a bibliometric and thematic review (2000–2025)

This study analyses the implementation of green banking based on previous research. The bibliometric method was used in this study. The findings of this study show that green banking practices dominate the implementation of green finance because banks can apply environmentally friendly credit requirements as financial intermediaries. China is the dominant country in green banking. The highest number of green banking publications in 2024. Sustainability is the most published journal on green banking. Taghizadeh-Hesary Farhad has the highest number of local authors. The Southwestern University of Finance and Economics had the highest number of publications. These findings imply that green banking is especially important because many controversial sectors such as weapons manufacturing companies, fossil fuels, and illicit drugs depend on bank financing. This implies that if banks do not implement green banking, it will have a negative impact on the environment. The contribution of this research is the importance of green banking in overcoming climate change, because the function of banks as intermediaries can affect a company’s operational behavior through credit approval requirements. However, this research should be continued to avoid green washing. A limitation of this study is that it used only the Scopus database.