The Evolution of GSS+ Bond Research following the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles: A Bibliometric Analysis, 2021-2025

Climate change and sustainability challenges have accelerated innovation in debt financing, especially through green bonds, social bonds, sustainability bonds and sustainability-linked bonds, collectively referred to as GSS+ bonds. This study reviews the development of GSS+ bonds research by combining bibliometric analysis and content analysis. Based on 152 English language articles indexed in Scopus from 2021 to 2025, the study uses Bibliometrix to conduct performance analysis and VOSviewer to science mapping, including publication trends, citation patterns, leading countries, institutions, journals, co-authorship networks, bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis and three-field plot mapping. The results show that GSS+ bond research has expanded rapidly, with an annual growth rate of 59.67%, reflecting increasing academic attention to sustainable debt instruments. China, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, Germany and India are the most productive countries. The intellectual structure of the field remains strongly centered on green bonds, particularly pricing, greenium, issuer characteristics, ESG performance and climate finance. However, current academic research rarely focuses on social bonds, sustainability bonds and sustainability-linked bonds. Based on the findings of this paper, GSS+ bond studies are still new and incomplete. More research is needed on relevant rules, product credibility, impact evaluation and how these instruments can be used in emerging markets.