ESG ratings, scores, and opinions. The state of the art in literature

The aim is to investigate the most widespread strands of analysis (starting from those mentioned above) and which emerging trends provide significant evidence for ESG rating research, although they are less investigated. The chapter follows the traditional systematic literature review analysis approach using data visualisation techniques (Fink, 2013; Denyer and Tranfield, 2009). The study contributes to the advancement of ESG rating, scoring, and opinion by verifying which aspects have been most explored and less also referring to the financial sector. Results highlight the need to broaden the empirical research helpful base for future development of a common methodological approach by ESG rating providers. The review also highlights, among other things, how a more significant effort of analysis is needed, also to identify possible ways to accelerate the construction of a market for ESG ratings. The chapter is structured as follows: paragraph 2 describes the research methodology used, explaining the steps that led to the paper collection from the Scopus database; paragraph 3 runs the bibliometric analysis and reports the findings using bibliometric software; paragraph 4 is focused on the systematic literature review based on the categorization of the selected articles into clusters according to contextual similarities; paragraph 5 provides the main conclusions and highlights the current gaps in the existing literature on ESG ratings.