Exploring the Sustainability-Microfinance Interface: A Bibliometric Review and Future Research Directions

Abstract

The quest for sustainable development underscores the critical need to mobilize the resources and investments in such a manner that promotes environmental preservation and planet-friendly practices. This study aims to systematically consolidate and synthesize the existing corpus of literature on the nexus of microfinance and sustainability through a bibliometric review of 483 documents spanning 2014-2024, which has been curated from the Scopus database. This study presents a pioneering effort to examine the role of microfinance in promoting sustainability to uncover the intellectual structure, research trends, and practical implications within this domain. Trend analysis illustrated an upward trend in research attention and indicated significant growth in 2023, underscoring the rising relevance of microfinance in promoting sustainability. By utilizing the tools like VOS viewer software and biblioshiny application of R software, the study identified four main thematic clusters through the keyword’s co-occurrence analysis: “Role of microfinance in driving sustainability, Trade-off between financial and social performance, Financial inclusion and sustainable microfinance practices, and Achieving financial and social efficiency through corporate governance practices.”