Abstract
The credibility of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information is increasingly regarded as the cornerstone of sustainable financial and corporate environmental accountability. However, the academic picture of linking the audit mechanism with ESG research is still fragmented and lacks systematic integration. Based on 369 documents retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), PubMed, and Scopus spanning 2015 to 2025, this study uses CiteSpace for knowledge mapping and visualization analysis, and conducts a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the intersection of audit and ESG, addressing a gap that existing reviews have not yet systematically filled. The results show that this field has changed from the marginal exploration stage (2015–2019) to the rapid expansion stage (2020-present). The main drivers include the increasing regulatory pressure on ESG information disclosure and the growing demand of investors for reliable environmental reports. The cooperation network presents a model of “micro-closed and macro-open”: cooperation at the author and institutional levels is still highly dispersed, while China has become a major contributor in a relatively integrated international network. Thematic analysis identified 11 research clusters, among which ESG information disclosure has become the most prominent core topic, and two competing research paths have been formed around it: one focuses on the economic consequences of disclosure on capital market pricing, and the other focuses on the inherent credibility challenges of ESG reports themselves. The key finding is that audit does not constitute an independent sub-domain in this field; on the contrary, it penetrates into multiple ESG research clusters through three mechanisms: information credit enhancement, governance substitution and risk transmission. These findings systematically reveal how audit, as a key governance tool, ensures the quality of environmental and sustainable development information that investors, regulators and policymakers rely on.
1 Introduction
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) breaks down enterprise sustainability into measurable and manageable dimensions, providing a systematic tool for investors and enterprises to assess ESG issues in economic activities (), which is widely regarded as an important path for promoting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (). ESG practice can not only convey responsible management signals to the market through the “reputation effect,” but also strengthen internal and external governance constraints through the “supervision effect,” so as to improve the sustainable development performance of enterprises (; Zhang et al., 2024); ESG capability is also regarded as a strategic resource that is difficult to imitate, which helps to form a sustainable competitive advantage (). However, the realization of the above positive effects is highly dependent on the quality of ESG information.
In fact, ESG practice is facing multiple difficulties from information production to information consumption. On the production side, many jurisdictions are still based on voluntary disclosure and lack a convenient, credible and comparable regulatory framework (Singhania et al., 2023), leaving room for enterprises to engage in regulatory arbitrage and selective choice of disclosure standards across different jurisdictions (Singhania and Saini, 2021; ; Singhania et al., 2023; ). This difference in standards is further transmitted to the information processing end: rating agencies differ significantly in indicator selection, weighting and data sources, resulting in extremely low rating correlation for the same enterprise and seriously diluting the information content of the ratings (). More troubling still, enterprises may whitewash their ESG image through selective disclosure or exaggerated expression, and even implement complex and diverse “greenwashing” behaviors (Yu et al., 2020; ); moreover, the vast majority of ESG disclosures have not been audited by independent third parties, so the space for false or exaggerated statements persists (; Yu et al., 2020). The cumulative consequence of these problems is that, although ESG reports continue to grow in quantity and form, the actual ESG performance of enterprises may be decoupled from their disclosure (; ; Sklavos et al., 2025), which ultimately erodes investors’ and the public’s trust in the ESG framework and weakens the credibility of the whole system.
Audit provides a natural opportunity to address the above dilemma. Many ESG issues, such as environmental compliance risks, supply chain labor problems and structural governance defects, are transformed into actual financial risks through operational, compliance, reputational and other channels, and auditors must assess all risk factors that may lead to material misstatements when auditing financial statements (). This objective relationship, coupled with auditors’ dual qualifications of both professional competence and institutional obligations, lays the foundation for integrating ESG factors into professional judgment. Accordingly, auditors can independently verify ESG information according to mainstream frameworks such as GRI, SASB, and IFRS S1/S2 (; ; Nielsen, 2023), improve the reliability of ESG scores, alleviate the information distortion caused by inconsistent rating standards, and thereby bridge the trust gap between investors and enterprises (; ; Sneideriene and Legenzova, 2024). If ESG is further incorporated into the scope of mandatory compliance audit, this is equivalent to imposing hard constraints at the legal and governance levels in areas with weak regulatory enforcement (; Nielsen, 2023).
It can be seen that research in the cross-field of audit and ESG has grown rapidly in the past decade, and relatively abundant evidence has been accumulated on issues such as audit committee, audit independence, audit quality, ESG disclosure, ESG divergence and greenwashing. However, existing reviews each address audit within a specific sub-dimension of ESG research: some examine the relationship between audit quality and ESG performance (), others focus on sustainability report assurance (), and others are limited to the role of internal audit in ESG assurance (Sheta et al., 2025; ). What remains absent is a systematic treatment of audit as a cross-cutting governance dimension that operates across the ESG research landscape as a whole, rather than within any single thematic sub-domain. To the best of our knowledge, such a knowledge map has yet to be established, and this study is a systematic bibliometric effort to fill this gap.
This article uses bibliometric analysis and CiteSpace visualization tools to systematically analyze 369 ESG-related audit papers published between 2015 and 2025, retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), PubMed, and Scopus. The study aims to trace the evolutionary path of this field over the past 10 years, identify its core knowledge base and thematic structure, reveal the dynamic migration of the research frontier, and clarify the research gaps that have yet to be filled in the existing literature. Compared with the existing literature, the characteristics of this study are reflected in two aspects: first, it provides a knowledge mapping of the rapidly expanding but not yet systematically integrated research field of audit and ESG, helping scholars to quickly locate core literature, key authors, and major academic communities; second, through keyword co-occurrence analysis and document co-citation analysis, it reveals the evolutionary path and frontier shifts of research topics, providing a directional reference for subsequent research.
The rest of this article is arranged as follows: Section 2 introduces the materials and methods. Section 3 presents the results and discussion, comprising descriptive analysis of publication trends and journal distribution (Section 3.1), and the main bibliometric analysis results including co-authorship networks, co-citation analysis, and keyword analysis (Section 3.2). Section 4 discusses future research directions, and Section 5 concludes the paper.
2 Materials and methods
2.1 Materials
As one of the most authoritative academic databases in the field of scientific and technological literature, Web of Science (WoS) is widely recognized by the academic community. Because it covers a wide range of core research directions in the field of science and technology (), WoS has become the preferred data source in bibliometric research (van Leeuwen, 2006). In order to ensure comprehensive coverage of the research topic, this study adopts a multi-database retrieval strategy to collect data from the three mainstream academic databases of WoSCC, PubMed and Scopus.
The data collection was completed on 1 May 2026. Among them, WoSCC data was obtained through the online portal of the National Library of China, and PubMed and Scopus data were retrieved through their respective official portals. The three databases adopt a unified core retrieval strategy, specifically: audit* AND (“environmental, social, and governance” OR “environmental, social and corporate governance” OR “ESG”), requiring the literature to involve both audit and ESG concepts in the title, abstract or keywords. The retrieval time range is limited to January 2015 to December 2025, the language is limited to English, and the literature type is limited to articles and reviews to focus on recent developments in the field of ESG and audit research.
The literature screening process follows the PRISMA framework and is carried out in four stages, as shown in Figure 1. In the identification stage, three databases (WoSCC, PubMed and Scopus) retrieved a total of 767 records. In the initial screening stage, cross-database duplicate records were identified by two researchers who independently cross-checked each record’s title, author names, and DOI; when the two researchers’ assessments agreed, the record was processed accordingly, and when their assessments disagreed, a third researcher independently reviewed the record, with the three researchers reaching consensus through discussion. This process eliminated 320 duplicate records, and the remaining 447 records entered the follow-up evaluation. In the qualification evaluation stage, the same two researchers independently assessed the relevance of the remaining records based on titles, abstracts, and full texts, judging relevance according to whether the cross-research content of audit and ESG was addressed; when the two researchers’ assessments agreed, the record was included or excluded accordingly, and when their assessments disagreed, a third researcher independently reviewed the record, with the three researchers reaching consensus through discussion, ultimately excluding 78 unrelated records. Finally, in the inclusion stage, a total of 369 records were retained for bibliometric analysis.
FIGURE 1
2.2 Methods
Scientific knowledge visualization, rooted in social network analysis and graph theory, has emerged as a distinct branch of bibliometric methodology. So far, there have been at least nine major software tools that have been developed to serve science mapping and domain analysis. One of them is the CiteSpace software which is a free scientific visualization package written in Java originally created by Chaomei Chen at Drexel University, USA (). Due to its high functionality and easy-to-use nature, CiteSpace has become popular both in the world and is widely applied in various spheres of research. In line with that, we visualized the obtained information using CiteSpace (version 6.2. R3).
The analysis and processing of the 369 documents followed the procedure outlined below. First, a project named “ESGAUDIT” was created to import all plain-text records containing complete title information and references. Second, the CiteSpace software parameters were set as follows: the time slice extended from 2015 to 2025, with each year treated as an independent slice; the term source varied by analysis type—co-authorship and co-citation analyses selected the full field, whereas keyword co-occurrence analysis excluded Keywords Plus; node types included authors, institutions, countries, cited references, cited authors, cited journals, and keywords; for the keyword co-occurrence and keyword clustering analyses, network pruning was performed using the Pathfinder algorithm with “Pruning sliced networks” and “Pruning the merged network” enabled; no pruning was applied to the keyword timeline visualization, co-authorship, or co-citation analyses; link parameters retained the system defaults; and the visualization output was set to the cluster view, displaying both the static network and the merged network simultaneously. Finally, CiteSpace was executed to generate the corresponding network maps and analysis results. Based on this procedure, the completed co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence analyses revealed the research landscape of this field from different dimensions.
3 Results and discussion
3.1 Descriptive analysis
3.1.1 Analysis of annual publications
To reveal the evolution of audit and ESG research, Figure 2 highlights the annual publication output volume in the area between 2015 and 2025.
FIGURE 2
The figure shows that the research output has undergone a distinct evolution, transitioning from an early exploratory stage with few publications to a period of substantial growth in publication volume. From 2015 to 2019, the annual publication output in this field averaged approximately one article per year. During the period 2020–2025, publication output increased sharply, rising from 5 articles in 2020 to 174 in 2025. Around 2020, the volume of articles in this cross-field jumped significantly. A reasonable explanation is related to the overall background of this period: with the acceleration of the global sustainable development agenda and the tightening of ESG-related regulations in various jurisdictions, the market is increasingly aware that non-financial risks such as environment, society and governance may be transformed into substantial financial and market consequences in a relatively short time, and the ESG information disclosed by enterprises has not been audited or verified to a large extent by an independent third party (; Yu et al., 2020). At the same time, there are significant differences between rating agencies on the ESG evaluation of the same enterprise, which further weakens the credibility of relevant information (). Against the background of the lack of a unified, credible and comparable disclosure and verification framework (Singhania et al., 2023), investors and regulators’ demand for “trusted and independently verified ESG information” has increased, and the role of audit in ensuring the quality of ESG information has become the focus of attention in the academic community.
3.1.2 Analysis of journals publications
In total, 158 journals have contributed to the audit and ESG literature. To identify the core journals, Table 1 summarizes the top 10 most productive journals in this field.
TABLE 1
| Journal | Record count | % of 369 |
|---|---|---|
| Sustainability | 35 | 9.458 |
| Corporate Social Responsibility And Environmental Management | 18 | 4.878 |
| Finance Research Letters | 13 | 3.523 |
| Journal Of Financial Reporting And Accounting | 10 | 2.710 |
| Plos One | 9 | 2.439 |
| International Review Of Financial Analysis | 8 | 2.168 |
| Business Strategy And The Environment | 7 | 1.897 |
| International Journal Of Disclosure And Governance | 7 | 1.897 |
| Managerial Auditing Journal | 6 | 1.626 |
| Borsa Istanbul Review | 5 | 1.355 |
Top 10 journals with the highest number of papers.
As presented in this table, Sustainability ranked first with 35 articles (9.458%), followed by Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management (18 articles, 4.878%) and Finance Research Letters (13 articles, 3.523%). A total of 118 articles were published in the top ten journals, accounting for about 31.978% of the total literature (369 articles), indicating that the distribution of research results in this field is relatively scattered, without a highly concentrated core journal. In terms of journal attributes, these journals cover many disciplines such as sustainability, corporate social responsibility, finance, accounting and corporate governance, which further reflects the interdisciplinary characteristics of this field.
3.2 Bibliometric analysis
3.2.1 Co-authorship analysis
Co-authorship analysis is one of the core methods of scientific cooperative research, which aims to conduct quantitative statistics and relationship exploration on the phenomenon of two or more authors jointly completing an academic literature, so as to reveal the hidden pattern of scientific research cooperation. CiteSpace can be used to analyze these relationships at three levels: micro-level (author co-authorship networks), meso-level (institutional co-authorship networks), and macro-level (country co-authorship networks).
3.2.1.1 Author co-authorship analysis
To identify the core research forces in this field, an author cooperation network has been built, depicted in Figure 3. The network contains 973 nodes and 1339 edges. Despite the large number of authors, the network structure is highly fragmented: the largest cluster contains only 20 nodes (about 2% of all authors), the remaining clusters have only 2 to 4 nodes, and there is no obvious connection between each cluster. This model shows that cooperation in this field is limited to small and close research teams and has not yet formed a stable cross-team collaboration.
FIGURE 3
On the basis of the above network analysis, the three main research teams are analyzed. The first main team is led by Hussainey, including researchers such as Fadi Alkaraan, Ibrahim Yousef and Mahmoud Elmarzouky, and pays special attention to external audit assurance, audit committee characteristics and internal audits to improve the credibility of information disclosure (; ; ; ). The second research team is composed of Khatib, Amosh, Hazaea, Li, et al., focusing on the characteristics of the board of directors, the audit committee, and audit quality in ESG practice (; ). The third collaborative team, featuring Zahid, Maqsood, Taran, Khan, Chersan, Anwar and Sági, focuses on the relationship between ESG performance and enterprise value, explores dimensions such as capital financing decision-making, dividend payment policy and financial performance, with a specific emphasis on the moderating role of audit quality (Zahid et al., 2022; Zahid et al., 2023a; Zahid et al., 2023b; Zahid et al., 2024). Taken together, these collaborative teams reinforce the view that audit has become a key governance mechanism that affects ESG.
3.2.1.2 Institution co-authorship analysis
To describe the collaboration patterns of research institutions, we used the same method as in the author co-authorship analysis to build an institutional co-authorship network. As shown in Figure 4, the network consists of 519 institutions connected by 658 links, yet the network density is only 0.0049. This finding indicates that the overall institutional collaboration landscape remains fragmented and lacks broad and stable inter-institutional partnerships. Combined with the late start and rapid development of this field (see Section 3.1) and its cross-disciplinary nature spanning accounting, finance, sustainable development, and corporate governance, this extremely low density suggests that inter-institutional ties have yet to consolidate into lasting and systematic partnerships. This pattern is consistent with an early-stage field in which knowledge production relies primarily on the parallel and independent outputs of individual institutions, rather than on coordinated and cumulative research programs—a structural condition that constrains cross-institutional replication and theoretical integration. Notably, this institutional fragmentation stands in sharp contrast to the relatively higher density observed at the country level (0.0689), indicating that macro-level collaboration has advanced more rapidly than the formation of stable meso-level partnerships.
FIGURE 4
The above-mentioned loose institutional cooperation network features a largest sub-cluster of 129 nodes, which is further composed of three smaller clusters. Among them, the first and most prominent sub-cluster is centered around the “Egyptian Knowledge Bank” (EKB), which connects institutions such as Xi’an Jiaotong University, the University of Portsmouth, and the University of Sfax. The second cluster brings together Southwest University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, King Faisal University and other institutions, while the third cluster is centered on Curtin University. Although these three smaller clusters together constitute the largest sub-cluster identified above, they are only weakly connected and do not cooperate closely with one another.
3.2.1.3 Country co-authorship analysis
Using the same method as above, a country cooperation network was built to examine international cooperation in this field. The network, depicted in Figure 5, consists of 68 country nodes and 157 edges, and its network density is 0.0689. This density is significantly higher than the densities observed at the author and institutional levels, indicating that collaboration is relatively close at the macro level.
FIGURE 5
As the figure illustrates, the network is mainly a large cluster with high node concentration and close connections. The cluster contains 57 nodes, accounting for 83% of all nodes. As represented by node size, China has the largest node, followed by the United States, Australia, and Italy, indicating that these countries are the main contributors in the field. In addition, the network connections are predominantly yellow, indicating that international cooperation has mainly occurred in recent years, a pattern consistent with the author and institutional cooperation networks.
3.2.2 Co-citation analysis
If two papers are jointly cited by a later paper, they constitute a co-citation relationship. This relationship indicates that their research topics are similar, which helps identify the core literature and core authors of the field and explore its knowledge structure.
3.2.2.1 Author co-citation analysis
In order to reveal the core group of scholars in this field, Table 2 lists the top ten most frequently cited authors. Jensen ranks first with 87 citations, followed by Velte (45) and García-Sánchez (42). In terms of centrality, Al-Shaer (0.14) is relatively central and plays a bridging role between different research topics, whereas the centrality of the remaining authors is generally low, indicating that the knowledge network in this field is still relatively loose. Judging from the average citation year, the active period of the highly cited authors is mainly concentrated between 2019 and 2023, indicating that the core knowledge base of this field formed relatively late and that the field as a whole is still in a stage of rapid development.
TABLE 2
| Counts | Centrality | Average year | Cited author |
|---|---|---|---|
| 87 | 0.02 | 2020 | Jensen |
| 45 | 0.00 | 2022 | Velte |
| 42 | 0.08 | 2021 | García-Sánchez |
| 41 | 0.02 | 2019 | Yu |
| 41 | 0.05 | 2016 | Dhaliwal |
| 39 | 0.01 | 2019 | Eccles |
| 36 | 0.14 | 2019 | Al-Shaer |
| 36 | 0.01 | 2019 | Christensen |
| 35 | 0.01 | 2020 | Kim |
| 34 | 0.00 | 2023 | Freeman |
Top 10 most cited authors.
Cluster analysis (Figure 6) shows that nine authors, including Jensen, Velte, García-Sánchez, Yu, Dhaliwal, Eccles, Christensen, Kim and Freeman, are mainly attributed to Cluster #1 “Financial Performance,” whose core knowledge base concerns how corporate behavior affects financial performance and capital market evaluation through information and governance mechanisms. Within it, Jensen and Freeman provide the two major theoretical pillars: the former, drawing on agency theory, focuses on governance efficiency under information asymmetry and principal-agent conflicts (); the latter, drawing on stakeholder theory, emphasizes how responding to diverse stakeholder demands shapes the long-term competitiveness of enterprises (). Although their starting points differ, both regard the information environment and governance quality as key determinants of enterprise value, and the empirical test of this logic in the ESG context constitutes the core concern of the cluster.
FIGURE 6
Specifically, the empirical research within the cluster proceeds along three strands. The first is the impact of governance mechanisms on ESG practice: Velte and García-Sánchez examine the roles of board gender diversity, the sustainability committee, executive compensation incentives, and CEO ability from the perspectives of the European market and international comparison, respectively (Velte, 2022; Velte, 2023; Velte, 2024; ). The second is the economic consequences of information disclosure: Dhaliwal, Kim and Yu focus on the cost of equity capital, analyst forecasts, earnings quality and enterprise value, revealing the multiple financial effects of ESG disclosure (; ; Yu et al., 2021). The third is comprehensive evidence at the enterprise level: Eccles’s landmark study shows that “high sustainability” enterprises that proactively adopt sustainable policies achieve better long-term financial and stock market performance ().
However, some studies question the premise of these positive effects, which constitutes an inherent tension in this field. point out that ESG data and its evaluation standards have socially constructed properties, so different data providers understand them in fundamentally different ways; further find that higher ESG disclosure levels not only fail to promote rating consensus but, on the contrary, exacerbate the divergence among rating agencies. At the same time, the research of Velte and Kim reveals the boundary conditions of the positive effects, indicating that enterprises may make strategic substitutions in ESG practice (Velte, 2021; ). This shows that the effect of ESG disclosure is not unidirectional but depends on specific transmission mechanisms and boundary conditions.
It is worth noting that Al-Shaer, who belongs to Cluster #8 “Moderating Effect,” provides supplementary evidence for the above transmission chain from the micro-governance level and plays an important role in connecting different themes. Unlike Velte’s macro-institutional perspective, Al-Shaer pays more attention to how specific governance mechanisms moderate the quality and credibility of ESG practice: she finds that the independence and professional expertise of the audit committee can enhance the credibility of sustainability reports (), and she further links the quality of ESG disclosure with the quality of financial reporting, showing that high-quality sustainability reporting is significantly associated with lower earnings management, with audit effort moderating this relationship (). Al-Shaer’s research thus directly responds to Eccles’s and Christensen’s concerns about the reliability of disclosure data and lays the groundwork for the core theme of audit.
3.2.2.2 Document co-citation analysis
The frequency of citations in the literature is the key measure of its academic influence. This section examines highly cited literature and highly central literature, aiming to reveal the mainstream trend and core focus of research in this field.
Table 3 presents the ten most frequently cited documents in the ESG disclosure literature, ranked by citation count. These documents represent the most influential contributions to the field. ’s research on the subjectivity of ESG ratings ranked first with 32 citations, followed by Yu et al. (2020)’s study on greenwashing in ESG disclosures (28 citations) and ’s examination of the relationship between ESG practices and the cost of debt (27 citations). In terms of thematic distribution, the highly cited literature primarily centers on ESG rating divergence, ESG disclosure, and the nexus between ESG and financial performance. Judging from the publication time, all ten articles were published between 2020 and 2023, further confirming that the field is in an active period of rapid knowledge accumulation.
TABLE 3
| Cited article title | Counts | Author | Year | DOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Why is corporate virtue in the eye of the beholder? The case of ESG ratings | 32 | Christensen | 2022 | 10.2308/TAR-2019-0506 |
| Greenwashing in environmental, social and governance disclosures | 28 | Yu | 2020 | 10.1016/j.ribaf.2020.101192 |
| ESG practices and the cost of debt: Evidence from EU countries | 27 | Eliwa | 2021 | 10.1016/j.cpa.2019.102097 |
| Firms and social responsibility: A review of ESG and CSR research in corporate finance | 26 | Gillan | 2021 | 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.101889 |
| Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure: A literature review | 26 | Tsang | 2023 | 10.1016/j.bar.2022.101149 |
| Sustainable investing with ESG rating uncertainty | 24 | Avramov | 2022 | 10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.09.009 |
| Aggregate confusion: The divergence of ESG ratings | 24 | Berg | 2022 | 10.1093/rof/rfac033 |
| ESG disclosure and financial performance: Moderating role of ESG investors | 21 | Chen | 2022 | 10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102291 |
| The role of ESG performance during times of financial crisis: Evidence from COVID-19 in China | 20 | Broadstock | 2021 | 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101716 |
| ESG impact on performance of US S&P 500-listed firms | 21 | Alareeni | 2020 | 10.1108/CG-06-2020-0258 |
Top 10 most cited documents.
The results of the literature co-citation cluster analysis point to ESG disclosure as a core area (Figure 7). An in-depth analysis of the top ten highly cited literature reveals that , in their review of ESG/CSR research from a corporate finance perspective, and Tsang et al. (2023), in their review of ESG disclosure from an accounting perspective, both focus on the relationship between ESG/CSR and corporate performance/value, while emphasizing the existence of disagreements in the existing research findings. An analysis of the remaining eight highly cited documents further corroborates this disagreement: some studies advocate a positive effect of ESG disclosure on enterprise performance, whereas others emphasize the inherent limitations of ESG disclosure and ESG ratings.
FIGURE 7
Some literature emphasizes that ESG disclosure has a positive effect on performance (; ; ; ). From the perspective of equity investment, confirm that ESG investors exert a substantial moderating effect on this relationship, and during the COVID-19 global pandemic, investors interpret ESG performance as a signal of future stock performance and/or risk mitigation (). Turning to the perspective of debt financing, point out that lending institutions pay attention to ESG performance and ESG disclosure in credit decisions, both of which are significantly negatively related to corporate cost of debt, and ESG disclosure also has a substitutive role in the relationship. It can be seen that whether it is equity investors or creditors, the interpretation and response of ESG information by capital market participants constitute the core transmission mechanism through which ESG affects corporate financial outcomes. In addition to the impact of overall disclosure, the sub-dimensions are also worth paying attention to. show that during the crisis period, the environmental (E) and governance (G) sub-dimensions have a positive impact on stock returns, while the social (S) sub-dimension has a negative impact. In addition, find that environmental (EVN) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure have a negative impact on operational and financial performance (ROA, ROE), while corporate governance (CG) disclosure can improve operational performance (ROA) and market performance (Tobin’s Q).
Another part of the literature reveals the limitations of ESG disclosure. First, the limitation stems from the reliability of the information disclosed by the enterprise itself. Because the ESG data provided in the enterprise’s sustainability report is usually unaudited, enterprises may conceal real ESG performance and greenwash ESG data. Yu et al. (2020) defines “greenwashing” and creates a peer-relative greenwashing score. A comparison of multiple scrutiny mechanisms reveals that firm-level governance factors are the most effective in suppressing misleading ESG disclosure. Second, the limitations are also reflected in the “rater effect” (). point out that higher ESG disclosure levels actually lead to greater ESG rating disagreement; at the same time, the CAPM alpha and effective beta both increase with the increase of ESG uncertainty, while the negative ESG-alpha relation weakens ().
The nodes with higher centrality are of greater importance as they play a critical role in connecting various research fields. In this regard, Table 4 presents the documents with centrality scores exceeding 0.1. have the highest centrality scores, exploring the impact of the characteristics of the audit committee on voluntary CSR disclosure. The centrality values of the other two documents are the same: confirm the direct relationship between non-financial information disclosure and stock market response; integrates internal governance, external verification and voluntary disclosure into a unified analytical framework, thus introducing the perspective of external audit.
TABLE 4
| Article title | Centrality | Author | Year | DOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The impact of audit committee characteristics on CSR disclosure: An analysis of Australian firms | 0.11 | Appuhami | 2017 | 10.1111/auar.12170 |
| The effect of audit committee effectiveness and audit quality on corporate voluntary disclosure quality | 0.1 | Agyei-Mensah | 2019 | 10.1108/AJEMS-04-2018-0102 |
| The economic consequences associated with integrated report quality: Capital market and real effects | 0.1 | Barth | 2017 | 10.1016/j.aos.2017.08.005 |
Documents with high centrality (centrality >0.1).
3.2.3 Keywords analysis
3.2.3.1 Keywords co-occurrence analysis
Keywords can provide insight into the core content of the literature. Through high-frequency and high-centrality keywords, researchers can grasp the trends of mainstream research topics. Accordingly, this study uses CiteSpace to draw a keyword co-occurrence network map (Figure 8) and presents the top ten keywords ranked by frequency and centrality in Table 5.
FIGURE 8
TABLE 5
| Ranking | Counts | Keywords | Centrality | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 40 | corporate governance | 0.38 | corporate governance |
| 2 | 33 | ESG performance | 0.31 | ESG performance |
| 3 | 24 | ESG disclosure | 0.2 | ESG disclosure |
| 4 | 18 | audit committee | 0.13 | audit committee |
| 5 | 17 | corporate social responsibility | 0.11 | sustainable development goals |
| 6 | 16 | audit quality | 0.1 | corporate social responsibility |
| 7 | 13 | sustainability reporting | 0.09 | sustainable development |
| 8 | 12 | financial performance | 0.07 | audit quality |
| 9 | 12 | sustainable development | 0.07 | sustainability reporting |
| 10 | 12 | audit fees | 0.07 | financial performance |
Top 10 keywords ranked by frequency and centrality.
We observe four primary areas of research focus in
Figure 8;
Table 5.
ESG: Corporate governance ranks foremost in both frequency (40) and centrality (0.38), and it is confirmed as the most commonly discussed topic and the most important bridging concept across research areas. ESG performance (frequency: 33; centrality: 0.31) and ESG disclosure (frequency: 24; centrality: 0.20) come next as they jointly constitute the central thematic pillars of the study domain.
Audit: Audit-related keywords are ranked highly in both frequency and centrality but have varying priorities. The audit committee occupies the fourth position in terms of frequency (18) and centrality (0.13), showing that the topic is not only well researched but also a critical bridging node. Audit quality, which comes sixth in frequency (16), is placed eighth in terms of centrality (0.07). Notably, audit fees appear exclusively in the frequency ranking.
Sustainability: Corporate social responsibility (frequency: 17; centrality: 0.1), sustainability reporting (frequency: 13), sustainable development (frequency: 12; centrality: 0.09), and sustainable development goals (centrality: 0.11) are all intrinsically linked to ESG research. These keywords not only represent core topics within this field but also act as connective nodes linking distinct thematic clusters.
Financial indicator: Financial performance ranks eighth by frequency (12) and tenth by centrality (0.07). As the only financial indicator, it evaluates the economic consequences of ESG practices and serves as a linking node.
3.2.3.2 Keywords co-occurrence clustering analysis
Through cluster analysis of high-frequency keywords, the core topic clusters in the field can be effectively identified. Figure 9 shows the keyword co-occurrence clustering, which contains 435 nodes and 881 edges. Its modularity Q is 0.8777 (greater than 0.3), and the weighted mean silhouette is 0.9495 (greater than 0.7). These indicators show that the internal structure of each cluster is well-defined, the clustering confidence is high, and the boundaries between clusters are distinct.
FIGURE 9
As shown in Figure 9; Table 6, the 11 clusters identified in this field span multiple thematic dimensions, encompassing ESG performance evaluation, ESG information disclosure, corporate governance, ESG assurance, sustainable development, and technology application, among others. In terms of cluster size (Table 6), ESG performance (cluster #0) ranks first with 43 articles, followed by corporate social responsibility (cluster #1) with 41 articles and ESG disclosure (cluster #2) with 39 articles, collectively representing the largest share of the corpus. Of particular note is the distribution of audit-related keywords across this cluster structure: terms including audit fees, audit quality, audit committee, internal audit, government audit, auditor rotation, auditor independence, and internal control cost recur among the high-frequency keywords of 8 out of 11 clusters, with the audit perspective distributed across clusters rather than concentrated in any single one. This spatially dispersed pattern suggests that the audit function tends to permeate the broader ESG knowledge landscape rather than converging into a self-contained sub-domain. Three clusters whose high-frequency keyword sets contain no audit-related terms, namely, cluster #3 (ESG rating divergence), cluster #8 (artificial intelligence), and cluster #9 (social and governance), are interpreted as reflecting the thematic boundaries of the extant literature rather than signalling the absence of audit relevance within these areas, and are therefore excluded from the analysis that follows. The eight audit-relevant clusters are examined in turn below.
TABLE 6
| Cluster ID | Size | Silhouette | Top keyword | Representative references |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 43 | 0.926 | ESG performance; audit fees; audit risk; supply chain; united kingdom | Song et al. (2023) |
| 1 | 41 | 0.878 | corporate social responsibility; financial performance; audit quality; business ethics; stakeholder theory | |
| 2 | 39 | 0.884 | ESG disclosure; gender diversity; audit committee; renewable energy; board composition | |
| 3 | 35 | 0.864 | ESG rating divergence; analyst attention; information asymmetry; financing constraints; agency theory | — |
| 4 | 33 | 0.694 | corporate governance; board of directors; ESG controversies; risk assessment; internal control cost | |
| 5 | 33 | 0.922 | ESG assurance; internal audit; ESG reporting; ESG reports; greenwashing | Soh and Martinov-Bennie (2015) |
| 6 | 32 | 0.866 | sustainable development; stakeholder engagement; environmental policy; government audit; corporate ESG | Yan et al. (2023a) |
| 7 | 29 | 0.899 | saudi arabia; social and governance; real earnings management; board gender diversity; auditor rotation | |
| 8 | 22 | 0.945 | artificial intelligence; natural language processing; corporate ESG performance; corporate sustainability; machine learning | — |
| 9 | 21 | 0.927 | social and governance (ESG); private regulatory standards; creditworthiness; societ and agrave; sustainability report | — |
| 10 | 13 | 0.95 | financial reporting; financial reporting quality; auditor independence; digital reporting; mediation analysis | Perica et al. (2025) |
Keyword clustering data statistics.
The terms highlighted in bold are audit‐related keywords. These keywords appear in the high‐frequency keyword lists of clusters #0, #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #7, and #10; consequently, these eight clusters are examined in the subsequent analysis.
3.2.3.2.1 Cluster #0 ESG performance, audit fees, and audit risk
The connection between ESG performance and audit fees is not a simple linear relationship, but a multi-dimensional impact covering direct effects, mediating effects and moderating effects. In terms of direct effects, there are two contradicting empirical findings within the cluster: on the one hand, some studies find that good ESG performance helps to significantly reduce audit fees (Song et al., 2023; ); on the other hand, others argue that the business complexity inherent in ESG practice forces an increase in audit effort, which elevates audit fees (; ). With regard to mediating effects, the cluster literature shows that ESG performance plays an intermediary transmission function in the relationship between sustainable products and audit fees (Nguyen et al., 2025); at the same time, it is also confirmed that the collection of environmental protection tax can indirectly improve the ESG performance of enterprises through the mediating channel of audit fees (). Regarding moderating effects, audit fees positively moderate the relationship between ESG practice and corporate performance (ROA and Tobin’s Q) (), while ESG performance operates as a negative moderator in the relationship between conditional robustness and audit costs ().
From the audit risk logic commonly pointed out by the cluster, the relevant literature regards strong ESG performance as a significant risk mitigation factor. The empirical evidence of this cluster consistently shows that corporate groups with stronger ESG performance often face more favorable result orientation in audit practice: their probability of receiving non-standard audit opinions is significantly lower (), they tend to be more detailed and transparent in the disclosure of Key Audit Matters (KAM) (Sulaiman et al., 2025), and the level of audit fees borne is relatively low (Song et al., 2023).
3.2.3.2.2 Cluster #1 corporate social responsibility and audit quality
The cluster research mainly reveals the two core functions of audit quality: the information credit enhancement mechanism and the governance substitution effect. High-quality audit is an effective certification mechanism that can significantly enhance the credibility of ESG information. The specific manifestations of this mechanism include: improving the efficiency of transforming corporate social responsibility into quantifiable firm performance (), strengthening the positive correlation between ESG scoring and financial performance (; Maji and Tiwari, 2025), and corroborating the governance role of ownership structure (Saleh et al., 2025). In addition, high-quality audit itself has a governance function that mitigates agency problems. This governance function is reflected in: it weakens the sensitivity between ESG performance and dividend payouts (Zahid et al., 2023b); the audit of the “Big 4” accounting firms has no significant impact on the relationship between ESG and equity capital costs, possibly because the information advantage brought by high-quality audit has been fully absorbed by market valuation, thus “neutralizing” the marginal effect of ESG (Mathath et al., 2025).
The cluster research also focuses on the impact of risk signal perception on audit quality in the practice of corporate social responsibility. Whether it is internal control deficiencies () or adverse ESG reputation (), this uncertainty does not necessarily damage the quality of audit, but may ultimately enhance the quality of audit by raising the risk alertness of auditors (Yang and Tian, 2025). However, this positive effect is not linearly incremental. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between ESG performance and audit quality (Tobar, 2025).
3.2.3.2.3 Cluster #2 ESG disclosure and audit committee
The cluster literature focuses on the direct and moderating effects of the audit committee in ESG disclosure. Relevant studies consistently show that the independence, accounting expertise and meeting frequency of the audit committee can significantly improve the quality of ESG disclosure (; ). Along similar lines, gender diversity also constitutes a positive promoting factor, and this positive effect is further strengthened when female members have financial expertise (Pozzoli et al., 2022; ). Concerning moderating effects, the audit committee is confirmed to be able to positively moderate the relationship between gender diversity of the board of directors and ESG disclosure, as well as the relationship between ESG disclosure and firm value (; ). On the contrary, the audit committee index has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between ESG disclosure and firm performance (), and the excessive busyness of audit committee members also weakens the positive impact of female members on ESG disclosure (Pozzoli et al., 2022).
3.2.3.2.4 Cluster #4 corporate governance and internal control costs
The cluster literature shows that the independence, expertise and diligence of the board of directors and the audit committee can significantly improve the effectiveness of internal control design and execution (; Zhang et al., 2025; ), and also reveals the significant correlation between ESG ratings and internal control system costs ().
3.2.3.2.5 Cluster #5 ESG assurance and internal audit
The cluster literature shows that as regulatory policies increasingly advance the ESG assurance framework, the functional positioning of internal audit has shifted from a traditional compliance-oriented role to a strategic verification role, becoming a key bridge between regulatory requirements and corporate ESG practice (Ridley and Gulko, 2025; Sheta et al., 2025; ). In terms of verification effectiveness, internal audit can not only improve the effectiveness of ESG assurance, but also form a useful supplement to external audit (Soh and Martinov-Bennie, 2015; ), thus enhancing the reliability of the basic data on which assurance depends (). However, the role of internal audit in ESG assurance exhibits a clear dimensional preference (Soh and Martinov-Bennie, 2015), and its scope and specific form of participation are also shaped by multiple internal and external factors (Rakipi and D’Onza, 2024; Sheta et al., 2025). At the practical level, internal audit still faces many challenges such as insufficient professional ability, vague role positioning, resource constraints and lack of a standardized framework (Sheta et al., 2025).
3.2.3.2.6 Cluster #6 sustainable development and government audit
The research on the off-office audit of natural resource assets of leading cadres in this cluster shows divided conclusions. Existing evidence shows that the off-office audit pilot directly promotes the improvement of enterprise ESG performance (Yan et al., 2023a); some studies further reveal that it has a significant positive spillover effect on the ESG performance of supply chain participants (Wu et al., 2025). However, some studies reach the opposite conclusion, finding that the off-office audit pilot has a significant negative impact on corporate ESG performance (Yan et al., 2023b).
3.2.3.2.7 Cluster #7 Saudi Arabia and auditor rotation
Examining data from Saudi non-financial firms between 2018 and 2022, found that corporate sustainable management (CSM) significantly curbed both accruals-based earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM). However, the overall impact of mandatory auditor rotation on EM was not significant, showing only a tenuous negative association with the comprehensive real earnings management index, a finding that did not survive robustness checks.
3.2.3.2.8 Cluster #10 financial reporting and auditor independence
The cluster literature shows that the boundaries of the independent role of auditors have been extended from the traditional field of financial reporting to the scope of ESG assurance. Although there is evidence that such intervention may trigger the radical negotiation strategy of the report preparer, thus eroding the objectivity of the auditor to some extent (), the overall empirical findings of the cluster still show that the function of audit independence in information credit enhancement remains clearly discernible. Specifically, enterprises with high-quality ESG disclosures are often accompanied by fewer non-standard audit opinions (Perica et al., 2025), and climate verification opinions issued by PCAOB registered auditors also have significant value relevance ().
Across the eight clusters examined above, the audit function does not operate through a single uniform pathway but manifests with varying prominence across different thematic domains. As systematically mapped in Figure 10, three principal mechanisms can be identified: information credibility enhancement (I), through which audit strengthens the reliability and verifiability of ESG-related information and thereby reduces information asymmetry between firms and external stakeholders; governance substitution (G), through which audit supplements or partially compensates for deficiencies in internal governance structures, mitigating agency problems in the context of ESG practice; and risk transmission (R), through which ESG-related risks are identified, priced, and incorporated into audit judgements, establishing a feedback channel between non-financial risk exposure and audit outcomes. Notably, these mechanisms are not mutually exclusive, and several clusters exhibit multiple pathways simultaneously, reflecting the functional complexity of audit as it engages with different dimensions of ESG research.
FIGURE 10
3.2.3.3 Keywords co-occurrence timeline analysis
In order to visually present the evolutionary trajectory of this field, this study uses the timeline algorithm of CiteSpace to visualize the knowledge network (Figure 11). The figure portrays the evolution of the field from two levels: in terms of the temporal rhythm, it once again confirms the conclusion of Section 3.1, that is, the field has gone through two stages of slow exploration from 2015 to 2019 and rapid expansion after 2020; in terms of the life cycle of individual themes, 11 clusters can be divided into mature themes and emerging themes. Clusters #0 (ESG performance) and #5 (ESG assurance) run through the entire research cycle and are mature themes; the remaining nine clusters do not enter the active period until after 2020 and are emerging themes. It should be noted that in the emerging theme, clusters #7 (Saudi Arabia) and #8 (artificial intelligence) only show isolated short arcs on the timeline. After emergence, they fail to run through the rapid growth period and have a short duration of activity.
FIGURE 11
On the basis of the above classification, the timeline further reflects the continuous expansion and deepening of research concerns over time. The early active nodes are mainly traditional audit issues such as internal audit and audit fees, and sustainability issues such as sustainable development, which are limited in scale and relatively dispersed. After entering the period of rapid expansion, the research focus extended to corporate governance and ESG disclosure; these nodes have accumulated higher centrality and become key connectors across the network.
4 Future research
The keyword cluster analysis above systematically maps the knowledge structure of the audit–ESG cross-field and also shows that current research still suffers from common problems such as conflicting conclusions, unclear mechanisms, and the lack of an integrated framework. On the basis of cross-cluster comparison, these research gaps can be consolidated into three interrelated yet distinct themes: identifying situational and boundary conditions; advancing from isolated findings toward an integrated framework; and clarifying the functional boundaries and cross-institutional generalizability that arise as audit migrates into ESG assurance. Each is discussed in turn.
4.1 Identifying the contextual and boundary conditions that determine the direction and magnitude of established relationships
A prominent gap running through multiple clusters is that the direction or intensity of many tested relationships shifts with situational factors that remain unspecified, producing conflicting empirical conclusions across the literature. Taking the relationship between ESG performance and audit fees as an example, both a reducing effect and an increasing effect are simultaneously supported in the literature (cluster #0); similarly, positive and negative effects coexist between the off-office audit of natural resource assets of leading cadres and corporate ESG performance (cluster #6). This divergence itself constitutes the most direct research gap. Future research needs to systematically identify the situational factors that drive these differences, such as industry characteristics, firm size, the institutional environment, the intensity of policy implementation in pilot regions, firms’ dependence on industry resources, and even differences in sample selection and variable measurement. Only by clarifying these conditions can we explain under what circumstances ESG performance tends to reduce or increase audit fees, and under what conditions the off-office audit plays a positive role.
The turning-point conditions of nonlinear relationships also deserve attention. The inverted U-shaped relationship between ESG performance and audit quality has been preliminarily confirmed, but the specific conditions under which the turning point forms have not been fully discussed (cluster #1). Future research can further identify the key factors affecting the position of the turning point, such as the auditor’s industry expertise or the type of ESG risk, so as to reveal when the accumulation of risk signals shifts from promoting to inhibiting audit quality.
In addition, the direction of certain moderating effects is itself contested: the audit committee positively moderates the board-diversity–ESG-disclosure relationship yet negatively moderates the ESG-disclosure–performance relationship. Future research needs to identify the source of this contradiction, in particular whether different performance measures drive the reversal of the moderating direction, as well as the boundary conditions, such as audit-committee members’ busyness, that may constrain the effectiveness of gender-diversity governance (cluster #2). Likewise, although a positive spillover effect at the supply-chain level has been preliminarily identified, its transmission mechanism and attenuation pattern remain unclear; future research can examine whether the spillover intensity varies with position in the supply chain, the closeness of the cooperative relationship, or industry characteristics (cluster #6).
4.2 Advancing from isolated bivariate relationships toward integrated mechanism frameworks
Existing studies mostly test effects within isolated bivariate relationships, and few integrate multiple relationships or variables into a single framework for interaction, mediation, or joint testing. For instance, research on ESG performance and audit fees has separately verified the positive moderating effect of audit fees and the negative moderating effect of ESG performance, yet how these two oppositely directed moderating effects operate jointly within a single analytical framework has not been tested in an integrated manner (cluster #0). In the area of corporate governance and internal control costs, the effect of governance characteristics on internal-control effectiveness and the effect of ESG ratings on internal-control costs currently constitute two independent research streams (cluster #4); future research can test whether the governance characteristics of the board and the audit committee play a mediating or moderating role in the relationship between ESG ratings and internal-control costs, that is, whether sound corporate governance can ease the upward pressure that ESG compliance places on internal-control costs. On the topic of auditor rotation, subsequent research can examine in depth whether an interaction exists between mandatory auditor rotation and Corporate Sustainable Management (CSM), that is, whether the effect of mandatory rotation on earnings management changes significantly with a firm’s level of sustainable management (cluster #7). The shared aim of these directions is to bring previously isolated relationships into a unified framework, thereby revealing linkage mechanisms that a single-relationship perspective cannot capture.
4.3 Delineating the expanding functional boundaries and cross-institutional generalizability of audit as it migrates into ESG assurance
Audit is moving from its traditional domain of financial reporting into ESG assurance. Because audit is a relatively late entrant in this field, two questions remain unclear, namely, what role audit plays after this migration and where existing conclusions actually hold, giving rise to two types of open issue: functional boundaries and cross-institutional generalizability.
In terms of functional boundaries, the dimensional preference of internal audit in ESG assurance has been observed, but the factors driving this preference have not been fully explained (cluster #5). Future research can explore whether differences in the degree of data quantification across the ESG dimensions, or the professional matching of auditors, are the main reasons for the pronounced differences in their participation. Research on auditor independence further shows that extending auditors’ responsibilities to ESG assurance may trigger radical negotiation strategies by report preparers, so future research can examine the specific extent to which auditor objectivity is eroded (cluster #10).
Regarding cross-institutional generalizability, the scope of applicability of many established conclusions still needs to be tested. Whether the “neutralization” effect of Big 4 audit services on the ESG-equity capital cost relationship also appears in other capital-market decision contexts warrants further investigation (cluster #1). The auditor-rotation literature can extend its sample to countries beyond Saudi Arabia that have adopted mandatory auditor rotation, in order to test the external generalizability of the findings (cluster #7). At present, the value relevance of verification opinions has been verified only under a specific regulatory regime; future research can conduct comparative analyses across different verification-qualification frameworks to examine how differences in the qualifications of verification providers affect value relevance, and to further identify how the erosion of objectivity differs across institutional environments (cluster #10).
5 Conclusion
5.1 Main findings
This study conducts a systematic bibliometric analysis of 369 documents in the audit–ESG field spanning 2015 to 2025. In general, this field has transitioned from the marginal exploration stage to one of explosive growth, forming a “micro-closed and macro-open” cooperation structure; ESG information disclosure constitutes the central thematic concern, with research proceeding along two competing paths: disclosure effectiveness and disclosure reliability. It is worth noting that an inherent tension exists between the two paths: the continuous expansion of disclosure volume does not automatically improve the credibility of information, but rather exacerbates divergence among rating agencies and leaves room for greenwashing. It is against this background that the spatially dispersed pattern of audit-related keywords revealed by the co-occurrence analysis carries particular analytical significance. Audit does not converge into a self-contained sub-domain within any single cluster, but permeates multiple core domains through the three mechanisms identified above. What this pattern reveals is not only the way in which audit is embedded within ESG research, but also a more fundamental understanding: the challenges of ESG information governance are essentially multi-dimensional and multi-layered, and audit’s engagement with this complex structure reflects an intrinsic alignment with its underlying governance logic, rather than constituting an externally appended instrument.
This understanding carries several structural implications for the practical role of audit in ESG information governance. With respect to the state of knowledge accumulation in this field, the highly fragmented collaboration at the author and institutional levels means that existing conclusions lack systematic cross-team replication, which in part underlies the contradictory findings documented across clusters. Practitioners drawing on relevant academic evidence therefore need to carefully assess the contextual scope of reported findings, rather than applying the results of individual studies directly as a basis for decision-making. Turning to the functional dimension of audit, the varying prominence of the three mechanisms across different clusters indicates that the influence of audit on ESG information quality does not operate through a single homogeneous channel, but is highly dependent on the prevailing institutional context, issue type, and governance structure. Treating audit as a standardised compliance instrument applicable uniformly across institutional settings may systematically underestimate the context-dependence of its functional effectiveness. Taken together, these two levels of implication converge on a shared conclusion: whether in the design of corporate governance structures, the delineation of auditors’ professional responsibilities, or the institutional arrangements of regulatory frameworks, the context-dependent embeddedness of audit within ESG information governance warrants explicit consideration, rather than gauging effectiveness solely through disclosure levels or the formal adoption of audit procedures.
As a bibliometric study, the principal contribution of this article lies in providing a knowledge map of this field, rather than an empirical test of any specific causal relationship. The value of this map is twofold: for existing research, it reveals the intrinsic connection between fragmented collaboration structures and conflicting conclusions, indicating that systematic cross-team and cross-institutional integration constitutes a necessary condition for the field’s maturation; for future research, it provides an operational analytical basis through the three-mechanism framework, enabling subsequent empirical studies to situate their contributions and locate their limitations within a relatively unified conceptual framework. The knowledge boundaries described in this study, encompassing the core areas where relative consensus has been established and the domains where knowledge gaps remain underexplored, are expected to serve as a reference point for the allocation of research resources and the prioritization of research agendas in this rapidly expanding field.
5.2 Limitations
In terms of data sources, this study is limited to English-language literature, which introduces coverage bias that warrants acknowledgement. In both the national and institutional co-authorship network analyses, China emerges as the leading contributor; however, a substantial body of research published in Chinese databases such as CNKI and CSSCI remains unincorporated, meaning China’s actual research output may be systematically underestimated. The contribution of Chinese scholarship as presented in this study should therefore be understood as a conservative lower bound rather than a complete picture of the field. Beyond language, monographs, conference papers, working papers, and practical reports from standard-setting bodies and regulatory authorities were excluded, further narrowing the coverage. The differing indexing foci of the three databases may also lead to the selective inclusion of literature on specific themes, meaning that exhaustive retrieval remains difficult to achieve despite the multi-database approach adopted.
At the level of research methods, bibliometric analysis is grounded in the accumulation of publications and citation relationships, and is better positioned to capture research directions that have achieved sufficient critical mass. Readers interpreting the cluster structure identified in this study should note that emerging topics with limited publication volume may not be sufficiently visible in the network; the knowledge map presented here is therefore best understood as a systematic mapping of the accumulated literature rather than an exhaustive representation of all research directions in this field. In addition, the keyword retrieval strategy has a certain blind spot for interdisciplinary literature characterised by highly heterogeneous terminology: the audit-ESG intersection spans multiple disciplines, and the same research issue may be expressed through different terminological conventions across fields, meaning that substantively relevant studies using different keyword expressions may not be fully captured. The identification of three functional mechanisms in this study should therefore not be taken as the only possible characterisation of the thematic structure of this field. The choice of parameters in CiteSpace, including time slice length, co-citation threshold, and clustering algorithm, may also affect cluster composition and network topology, and this sensitivity should be taken into account when interpreting the results.
At the level of conceptual definition, although ESG and CSR are not in the same category, they are often used interchangeably in the existing literature (Xie et al., 2019; ; ). The vagueness of the boundary of this concept may not only include CSR studies that lack ESG orientation, but also omit some results that are related to ESG but are not clearly marked.
Statements
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
LC: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Supervision. QZ: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft. BZ: Methodology, Writing – review and editing.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declared that generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.
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Summary
Keywords
audit, audit quality, bibliometric analysis, CiteSpace, environmental, social and governance, ESG disclosure
Citation
Chen L, Zhang Q and Zhao B (2026) Audit in ESG research: a bibliometric analysis (2015–2025). Front. Environ. Sci. 14:1885177. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1885177
Received
19 May 2026
Revised
20 June 2026
Accepted
21 July 2026
Published
11 August 2026
Volume
14 - 2026
Edited by
Guifu Chen, Xiamen University, China
Reviewed by
Bukola Titilayo Fagbemi, Western Illinois University, United States
Damith Gangodawilage, Eurasia Nations Campus, Sri Lanka
Updates
Copyright
© 2026 Chen, Zhang and Zhao.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Bin Zhao, binzhao@stu.hubu.edu.cn
† These authors have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship.
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