Mixed-method literature synthesis reveals themes and future directions in sustainable banking research, suggesting alignment with UN goals.
The purpose of this study is to present a systematic literature review of research articles on sustainable banking (SB). This study employed the SPAR-4 framework by integrating bibliometric analysis and qualitative content synthesis to review the literature in the domain. The review and analysis identified five thematic clusters: sustainable performance; environmental, social and governance integration in banks; green banking and ethical banking; corporate sustainability and financial stability brought by SB. The review further discovers the subthemes, which encompass influential researchers, top journals, their research findings and research agendas for future scholarly investigation. This study diverges from prior research that primarily relies on bibliometric mapping and insufficiently outlines future research agendas. This review combines bibliometric with a cluster-stratified comprehensive synthesis, progressing beyond the mere mapping of publication trends or the isolated evaluation of specific pillars of ESG to offer explanatory insights. Moreover, this study presents a conceptual framework specifying drivers, mechanisms, mediators and outcomes, and it further offers future research directions and policy-level insights that align SB with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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Mishra et al. (2026) studied this question.
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