Table 9.

Future research agenda for sustainable finance research

Future research	Research questions	Supporting source
Developing and diffusing Innovative sustainable financing instruments	What value do innovative sustainable financing instruments offer, and how can such value be improved or sustained? To what extent are innovative sustainable financing instruments feasible for adoption and implementation in emerging markets, and what actions can be taken to improve feasibility? To what extent are innovative sustainable financing instruments linked with investors preference, and what actions can be taken to improve that link? To what extent are innovative sustainable financing instruments successful in meeting their objectives, and what actions can be taken to improve or sustain success? How can formal and informal institutions curate, influence, and shape innovative sustainable financing instruments?	Clark et al. (2018), Chen et al. (2019), Tang and Zhang (2020) and Cui et al. (2020)
Magnifying and Managing the Profitability and Returns of Sustainable Financing	What are the benefits, costs, opportunities, and threats of sustainable financing across markets? How can the benefits, costs, opportunities, threats, and ways forward for sustainable financing be conceptualized in and managed through an operational framework that accounts for and speaks to myriad stakeholders (investors, institutions, regulators)?	Fu et al. (2020), Geczy et al. (2021), Kollenda (2021) and Cao et al. (2021)
Making Sustainable Finance more Sustainable	To what extent does investing in sustainable funds lead to sustainable returns, and how can it be improved or sustained? To what extent does sustainable finance enable firms to avoid controversy related to ESG, and how can it be improved or sustained? To what extent are sustainable funds sustainable before, during, and after crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic?	Popescu et al. (2021), Dorfleitner et al. (2021) and Quatrini (2021)
Devising and Unifying Policies and Frameworks for Sustainable Finance	What is the role and impact of regulators and financial institutions on sustainable finance (e.g., availability and performance of sustainable funds and instruments)? How can policies and frameworks for sustainable finance be developed and unified within and across markets?	Ng (2018), Taghizadeh-Hesary and Yoshino (2019), Elavarasan et al. (2021), Dikau and Volz (2021), Li et al. (2020) and Jan et al. (2021)
Tackling Greenwashing of Corporate Sustainability Reporting in Sustainable Finance	To what extent do firms engage in greenwashing of sustainability reports, and how can this be discouraged or mitigated? To what extent do firms engage in sustainable finance to manipulate traditional financial performance measures, and how can this be discouraged or mitigated? To what extent do firms engage in earnings manipulation with funds from sustainable financing, and how can this be discouraged or mitigated? In which markets do greenwashing of sustainability reports more or less prominent, and what can we learn from the latter and to what extent will it work for the former?	Garcia et al. (2017), Rezaee and Tuo (2017), Yu et al. (2020), Chen and Yang (2020), Huang (2020), Arouri et al. (2021), Uyar et al. (2020) and Sun and Zhang (2019)
Shining Behavioral Finance on Sustainable Finance	How do investors benefit from sustainable finance? How do investors perceive sustainable finance? What is the role of personality and behavioral biases of investors while selecting impact investing-based funds over conventional funds?	Dam and Scholtens (2015), Chatzitheodorou et al. (2019), Cerqueti (2021), Behl et al. (2021) and Bofinger (2021)
Leveraging the Power of New-age Technologies for Sustainable Finance	How can artificial intelligence and machine learning be applied to screen credit applicants and monitor credit users of sustainable financing (e.g., financial distress prediction, credit scoring, corporate insolvency prediction, credit card anomalies detection, fraudulent financial statement detection)? How can blockchain and machine learning be applied to track and flag impact concerns or successes in the activities of sustainable financing (e.g., carbon, climate, and energy financing) on sustainability goals (e.g., SDGs)? How can big data analytics and machine learning be applied to acquire knowledge about public sentiments about sustainability issues, and how can sustainable finance providers automate the incorporation of that knowledge in the evaluation and provision of sustainable financing using sustainable alternatives powered by new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing? How can cybersecurity and machine learning be applied to create a safe, secure, and trusted marketplace for sustainable finance? How can machine learning be developed and deployed in ways that detect and prevent algorithmic bias for sustainable finance? How can new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data analytics, cloud computing, and machine learning be integrated in tandem with cybersecurity to achieve operational and impact excellence for sustainable finance, and how can the enablers and barriers to this integration be leveraged and resolved, respectively? How can firms leverage on new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data analytics, cloud computing, and machine learning develop or adapt sustainable financing operations and instruments in innovative, smart, and agile ways?	Akter et al. (2020), Gupta et al. (2020) and Hassan and Abedin (2021)