Examining the Connection between Audit, ESG, and the Impact on Investment Efficiency: A Bibliometric Analysis

This research serves two main purposes: first, to explore the relationship between ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors and audit quality over time through an extensive literature review, and second, to examine how ESG influences investment efficiency.

The goal of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of existing literature on the impact of ESG on investments, while also considering investors’ perspectives on sustainable investments and how these factors affect the audit process. To achieve this, I will use VOSviewer software to perform a bibliometric analysis, focusing on the concepts of “ESG” and “investments.” This analysis follows a quantitative research methodology, based on a sample of 1,474 research documents published between 2007 and 2025. These documents were extracted from the Web of Science database after going through several filtering stages, such as selecting documents from the economic field, written in English, and primarily from the European region. After further filtering by adding the term “audit,” only 30 documents contained all three keywords, and 71 documents were identified as highly relevant, well-regarded, and impactful. Recent academic publications highlight four key themes: ESG, impact, corporate social responsibility, and their significant link to audit practices, sustainable investments, and the efficiency of these investments. This paper makes a substantial contribution to the literature on ESG investment efficiency and the critical role that audits play in the decision-making process for such investments.