Inclusive wealth as a measurement of sustainable future: bibliometric analysis for past, present and future research agenda in biodiversity accounting and sustainable development Open Access

The concept of inclusive wealth was first introduced by the Inclusive Wealth Report presented by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 2012, which proposed inclusive wealth as a comprehensive measure for sustainable development (Cheng et al., 2022). According to the report, exclusively Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Human Development Index (HDI), traditional measures of growth, are not appropriate measures of national progress because they indicate only one dimension of prosperity. This report asserted that inclusive wealth is a holistic and more appropriate measure of national prosperity because it includes produced capital, human capital and natural capital altogether. As Managi and Kumar (2018) investigated, inclusive wealth has given a significant perspective for a country to achieve well-being and long-term economic growth that stems toward sustainability. Through this strategic approach, a country becomes more capable of tracing a way toward a sustainable future. Moreover, it has been observed that it is more common to gauge the sustainable development of nations by social well-being measures such as inclusive wealth per capita. This study found that only 60% of nations exhibit nondeclining social well-being (Yamaguchi et al., 2019). The Inclusive Wealth Report 2023 by the United Nations emphasized that GDP is an inadequate measure of national progress because it only includes the market value of all goods and services while important aspects of economic prosperity like human capital and environmental degradation are overlooked (Sugiawan et al., 2023). Thus the report concludes that inclusive wealth is a more reliable measure of economic prosperity that provides an inclusive approach toward a sustainable future.

As the world is growing rapidly with limited resources and unlimited wants, there is a need to develop the paths that would go towards sustainability. There is always been a debate on which indicator accounts best to measure well-being and development (Costanza et al., 2009). In the beginning, in the 18th and 19th centuries, countries only focused on increasing production to develop economies and GDP, the market value of all goods and services, became the traditional measure of economic well-being (Syrquin, 2011). Over time, it has been noticed that societal well-being is compromised to measure economic progress in the context of GDP alone. For instance, Costanza et al. (2018) investigated that GDP is not a good measure of economic well-being because it includes only the marketed economic value of all goods and services and overlooks human well-being in terms of education and health. There come other measures like GDP per capita which consider social well-being but still have not proved suitable to measure economic progress (Dipietro and Anoruo, 2006). Moreover, it has been observed that GDP is only a measure of monetary transactions of goods and services which is far away from the concept of human development. In the early decade of the 20th century, researchers started to highlight the importance of human capital in evaluating economic development (Tsai et al., 2010). Dr Mehboob-ul-Haq developed the HDI to measure economic development. It includes longevity, education and living standard of people, which solved the problem of exclusion of social well-being from development indicators to an extent (Snchez, 2000). HDI and GDP are inseparable to present the true picture of economic well-being and prosperity. HDI was introduced to overcome the deficiencies of measuring well-being with GDP alone as HDI includes the concept of life expectancy, education and income in one matrix, which proved to be a good measure for economic progress and well-being with GDP collectively (Sajith and Malathi, 2020).

The mid-20th century showed explosive industrial growth and development across the globe. Industrialization, increased population and urbanization created pressure on natural resources that caused environmental deterioration (Yuhuan et al., 2024). After reaching a certain development point, it has been observed that in the race to grow, the quality of the environment has been compromised to larger extent. Nations grew without considering the late environmental impacts of their actions that resulted in environmental degradation, which led to social unrest and political instability (Lonergan, 1998). In the early 2000s, researchers integrated the core economic issues into one framework that hindered global progress and formulated some targets to mitigate these issues. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established that have to be achieved by 2015 (Hulme, 2009). The concept of sustainability comes to the front when it was observed that current generations developed at the cost of future generations. Then, there were introduced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are the extension of MDGs, with a targeted period till 2030 that ensures the efficient management and provision of resources for current as well as future generations. Sustainable development embraced the balance of economic growth with social equity and a safe environment (Stevens and Kanie, 2016). In recent years, we have seen unprecedented events of increased global temperature and frequent climate change scenarios with increased population and global hunger issues throughout the world that shifted the intentions of policymakers toward the environment and natural resource preservation to acquire sustainability. This led countries to rush to guard the natural resources and shield the environment from anthropocentric activities (Diffenbaugh et al., 2017).

In 2016, an international treaty was signed named the Paris Agreement, to mitigate climate change disruptions. Paris Accord was specifically aimed to limit global temperature between 1.5°C to 2°C. Diffenbaugh et al. (2018) investigated that frequent changes in weather, especially increased global temperature, influenced the different regions of the world. This study examined the national commitments and targets related to climate change consequences and future risks posed due to extreme weather conditions. The hazardous environmental variations led researchers to give greater emphasis on the environment in policymaking to acquire sustainability (Carraro and Siniscalco, 1993). In reality, traditional measures only depict economic growth rather than economic development and ignore the concept of sustainability (Pearce et al., 1996). In the race to grow with increased GDP and gradually accelerate the human capital, nations ignored the environmental impacts that influenced the next generations (C. Soni). For sustainable development (SDG 15), it becomes crucial to inculcate environmental awareness into policy decision-making and development indicators. Yamaguchi et al. (2019) investigated inclusive wealth, a new indicator to measure economic progress, which was proposed by the UNEP, which includes produced, human and natural capital altogether to promote sustainable development. Cheng et al. (2022) conducted their research in 219 cities in China to evaluate urban sustainability in the context of inclusive wealth, which includes produced, human and natural capital under different regional, social and economic conditions. They found that an increase in inclusive wealth provides a significant way to tackle the core economic issues that a nation faces on the road toward sustainability. Sugiawan et al. (2023) presented an empirical study in which they integrated the concept of inclusive wealth and sustainability to measure economic prosperity. They found a strong correlation between SDGs and inclusive wealth and proved that improvements in SDGs are associated with human well-being which clearly indicates that inclusive wealth is a good measure to sustainable development.

This study conducted a bibliometric analysis of relevant literature up to December 2024, which represents a pioneering effort to bridge the gap by thorough examination of the evolving landscape of inclusive wealth. The study highlights the past and current evolutionary patterns with critical hotspot themes through analysis of the publication trends and identifies the emerging future research agendas. Researchers can contribute to the existing literature by analyzing the past and current trends along with the most influential publications. Moreover, the bibliometric analysis provides the best strategic way for future research direction and also guides the researchers toward understudied topics or emerging trends in this 21st century that are necessary for sustainable development, which is a major goal concern of the world. Through a rigorous literature analysis, this study identifies key themes and challenges that provide guidance to the research and help to make better policy decisions. This study helps to increase the understanding of inclusive wealth as an appropriate measure of sustainable development.

This research contains four specific objectives:

1. Identify the most influencing publications on inclusive wealth using citation analysis.

2. Analyze the coauthorship analysis among authors, affiliations and countries in the domain of inclusive wealth.

3. Assesses the impactful historical contributions and current prevalent themes in inclusive wealth through cocitation analysis.

4. Explore the forthcoming trends using coword analysis in the fields of inclusive wealth.

Literature review plays a critical role in the process of research because it provides all the existing literature on a particular field of study, which helps to trace the past and current trends and formulate future research agendas (Knopf, 2006). The literature review can be of many types such as narrated literature review, traditional literature review, bibliometric literature review, etc. (Snyder, 2019). Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative approach to literature review, which evaluates the existing literature of a particular field through different techniques such as citation analysis, cocitation analysis, coauthorship analysis and co-occurrence analysis (Alsharif et al., 2020).

Bibliometric analysis is used to analyze the research status within a particular field through analysis of the existing publications (Alsharif et al., 2020). This technique analyzes the past and present trends of publications and explores future agendas (Marlow, 2014). Citation, coauthorship, cocitation and coword analysis are used as reliable methods to carry out bibliometric research (Donthu et al., 2021). Citation analysis discovered how publications, sources, countries and organizations are ranked by average citation related to a particular field (Donthu et al., 2021). Coauthorship analysis explains the interaction between authors, organizations and countries concerning to specific study (Rovira-Esteva et al., 2020). Cocitation analysis explored the hotspot themes that represent the evolutionary trends in existing literature (Suban, 2023). Whilst, coword analysis analyzed the keyword’s interaction to explore future research agendas (Leung et al., 2017). Flowchart for methodology is provided in Figure 1.

This research conducted a bibliometric analysis of the selected literature within a particular field. First, the data is collected from the Web of Science (WoS) database. Table 1 explains the criteria selected to gather data. This database is used to conduct bibliometric analysis because of its accuracy and rigorous viability (Pranckutė, 2021). It is the most widely used database to carry out bibliometric research worldwide (Zhu and Liu, 2020). Table 1 presents the WOS peculiarities. The “Period” consists of the publications till December 2024. The “Search Field” covered the specific topic of research which is “Inclusive Wealth”. The “Search Keywords” show all the words delineated in the search query is “Inclusive Wealth” or “Inclusive Capital” or “Comprehensive Wealth” or “Sustainable Wealth” or “Wealth Accounting” or “Natural Capital Accounting” or “Inclusive Growth” or “Inclusive Development” or “Sustainable Prosperity.” The “Citation Topics” shows all the interdisciplinary research related to inclusive wealth. The “Documents Type” is selected as “Articles” and the English as “Language” is selected. After the data is gathered, the bibliometric software VOSviewer 1.6.18 is used to conduct quantitative analysis. This presented the network visualization of all the documents, sources, countries and organizations, respectively, in citation coauthorship, cocitation and coword analysis. This study used the Biblioshiny (R-studio) software to present the pictorial graphs regarding the over-the-time production of publications. Finally, a thematic analysis has been undertaken that shows the past, current and evolutionary trends in the particular field of study.

The concept of inclusive wealth was first introduced by the Inclusive Wealth Report presented by the UNEP in 2012, which proposed inclusive wealth as a comprehensive measure for sustainable development (Cheng et al., 2022). Before the 21st century, there was no concept of inclusive wealth but after 2012, it has been observed that researchers shifted their interest toward inclusive wealth as a measure of a sustainable future because it encompasses produced, human and natural capital altogether in one matrix. After 2012, annual scientific production regarding inclusive wealth increased as more researchers started to take an interest in it. Figure 2 shows the visualization of the number of articles published in each year related to inclusive wealth.

Citation analysis is a type of bibliometric analysis in which we ranked the top publications based on units of analysis, which are documents, authors, organizations and countries. This analysis also presented the tabular and pictorial visualization of each unit of analysis (Zhu and Liu, 2020).

The citation technique based on the document unit of analysis select criteria of the minimum number of citations of a document is 3 and found that 954 out of 1,444 documents meet the threshold. The results of the top 15 influential documents are presented in Table 2. Similarly, in citation analysis based on institutions, this study used threshold level, the minimum number of documents of an organization is five and the minimum number of citations of an organization is one, to select the organization for analysis. Out of a total of 1,929 organizations, 107 meet the threshold level and results are presented in Table 2. Table 2 demonstrates the top 10 organizations ranked by average citation. This ranking depicted the researcher’s contribution and creative impacts of these organizations in the field of inclusive wealth. Figure 3 shows the network visualization of the top 10 organizations and documents that are ranked by citation. This pictorial graph shows that the University of Amsterdam, the University of Cambridge and Utrecht University have a greater collaborative nature of research across different specific regions in the world.

For threshold criteria, the minimum number of documents of an author is one and the minimum number of citations of an author is six. Out of the total of 4,078 authors, 2,118 meet the threshold level. The total strengths of citation links with other authors will be calculated for each 2,188 authors. In total, 1,000 authors are selected each with the greatest total link strength. Figure 3 shows the network visualization of the authors. This pictorial graph shows the collaborative nature of research between these authors in this particular field. Different authors all over the world collaborate to produce influential work regarding inclusive wealth as a measure of sustainable development. Figure 4 shows the top coauthors that collaborate among others are Asongu, Gupta and Mangi who have presented different articles over time. Comparatively big bubble shows the larger coauthors and the small bubble shows the few coauthors, respectively, who presented articles in this field altogether. Similarly, countries all over the world contribute to producing influential work in the field of inclusive wealth; the yearly research production in the top five countries is presented in Figure 5 which shows the trend pattern of research production in the top five countries. The results indicate that the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, South Africa and China are the top countries whose contribution to inclusive wealth research is increasing over time. Therefore, influential countries across the globe are publishing in inclusive wealth to a greater extent and are formulating a direction of work in this particular field.

The analysis of the most cited documents and the leading institutions highlights how the field of inclusive wealth has evolved. A highly cited article by Saebi et al. (2019) and Gupta and Vegelin (2016) indicates that early contributions focused heavily on linking inclusive development to broader social and environmental themes, setting a strong conceptual foundation for later research. The dominance of institutions from England, the Netherlands and the USA reflects the concentration of academic leadership in high-income countries, suggesting that much of the discourse has been shaped by Global North perspectives. However, the presence of African research institutions like the African Governance and Development Institute signals a growing engagement from the Global South, pointing toward a gradual diversification of voices in the field. Overall, these findings demonstrate that inclusive wealth research has moved from early conceptual discussions toward more applied, region-specific studies, marking an important maturation in the academic conversation.

Coauthorship analysis shows how authors, organizations and countries collaborate to produce their influential work in a particular field that would result in the betterment of the world collectively (Zhu and Liu, 2020).

For threshold criteria, the minimum number of documents of an author is one and the minimum number of citations of an author is also one. Out of the total of 4,078 authors, 3,397 meet the threshold criteria. The total strength of coauthorship links with other authors is calculated for each 3,397 authors. The 1,000 authors are selected for overall mapping. Figure 6 shows the network visualization of the author’s coauthorship analysis. The colors in diagram 6 show clusters and the rays indicate the coauthorship among authors. Figure 5 indicates that there are nine clusters and details of the cluster are provided in Table 3.

Similarly, for organization coauthorship analysis devised threshold criteria, the minimum number of documents of an organization is six and the minimum number of citations of an organization is one. Out of a total of 1,929 organizations, 81 meet the threshold criteria. The selected organizations have the total link strengths. Table 4 shows the organization’s coauthorship cluster details. Moreover, for country cocitation analysis, this study defined threshold criteria, the minimum number of documents of a country is ten and the minimum number of citations of a country is one. Out of a total of 122 countries, 49 meet the threshold criteria.

Cocitation analysis is a type of bibliometric analysis that helps to explore the hotspot themes that represent the evolutionary trends in existing literature (Suban, 2023). For a threshold criterion, the minimum number of citations of the cited reference selected is three. Out of a total of 72,482 cited references, 2,267 meet the threshold criteria. The total strength of cocitation links with other cited references was calculated for each of the 2,267 cited references. The 1,000 cited references were selected with the largest total link strength. Figure 7 shows the network visualization of cocitation analysis and hotspot themes. Cocitation analysis explored the eight thematic clusters with their representative publications. Table 5 shows all the clusters with their label, names and representative publications, respectively.

For threshold criteria, the minimum number of the co-occurrence of a keyword is 15. Out of the total 6,045 keywords, 100 meet the threshold. The total strength of co-occurrence links with other keywords is calculated for each of the 100 keywords. The selected keywords with the greatest total link strength are reported in Table 6. Figure 8 shows the network visualization of coword analysis and emerging trends, whereas Table 6 depicts the top 10 keywords ranked by co-occurrence. Table 7 shows four coword clusters with their names, labels and representative keywords, respectively.

Word cloud represents the most occurring words in a particular publication. Figure 9 shows the visualization of the most frequent words used in the different publications in the field of inclusive wealth.

Cocitation analysis explored seven thematic clusters that show the past and current evolutionary trends in the field of inclusive wealth research. Each cluster is explained below: The graphical presentation of the thematic evaluation is presented in Figure 10.

The red color indicates Cluster 1 and it contains 57 publications. With the help of the title of 57 publications, this study develops a common theme that reflects all 57 publications the name “Role of Fintech in Inclusive Green Growth.” This cluster explored how fintech (financial and technological innovation) ensures inclusive green growth. The concept of inclusive green growth emerged after the inclusion of environmental concerns in the framework of inclusive development (Smit, 2015). Inclusive development focuses on the well-being of all the individuals in the society regardless of their environmental impacts (Gupta and Vegelin, 2016). But with time it has been noticed that the well-being of the current generation is achieved at the cost of future generations (Davies, 2016). Because in the race to grow, countries only focused on produced capital and later on the human capital while completely disregarding the environment (Haluza et al., 2025; Wackernagel and Rees, 1997). The major cost of the industrial revolution was environmental degradation (Elheddad et al., 2021).

As time passed, researchers shifted the focus of nations toward environmental conservation and concluded that only inclusive growth is not sufficient enough for long-term economic development (Tisdell, 2005). Then, the concept of inclusive green growth comes to the front in the framework of sustainable development (Fay, 2012). The intersection of financial and technological innovation with sustainable practices emerged as one of the main drivers of inclusive green growth (Lu et al., 2024). Because the world is now focused on ensuring inclusive green growth, fintech has great potential to bridge the financial gap along with environmentally friendly technology (Wu et al., 2024). The traditional financial system is now too outdated and defaulted because it excludes marginalized groups from access to financial services due to different economic and geographical barriers (Brunnhuber and Brunnhuber, 2021). Fintech guarantees access to financial services to all through mobile banking, blockchain technology and digital lending (Manggala, 2023). The Global Findex Database explored the role of digital financial services in reducing economic inequality and increase the great participation in financial markets (Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2022). Moreover, fintech-driven innovations such as green finance promote environmentally friendly economic activities (Udeagha and Muchapondwa, 2023). The availability of financial services allows people to invest in health, education and new startups, which promote inclusive wealth as it helps to grow produced, human and natural capital that leads to economic growth and economies move toward progress (Braun and Haluza, 2024; Lapina et al., 2021). Ezzahid and Elouaourti (2022) revealed the influence of financial development to increase investment and economic growth in Africa. They also created a Findex to evaluate the financial development levels in Africa particularly (Gelbard and Leite, 1999). Kanga et al. (2022) carried out their research on the interaction between Fintech diffusion and financial development and GDP per capita. They found that Fintech diffusion and financial development influence human capital in the short run facilitate living standards and encourage economic growth (Kanga et al., 2022). As the world has struggled through environmental hazardous and economic disparities fintech provide a strategic way toward sustainable development (Xie and Huang, 2024). Ge et al. (2024) explained how fintech drive the inclusive green growth to ensure sustainable development.

The green color indicates Cluster 2 which contains 85 publications. This study allocates a common theme titled “Natural Capital Accounting and Inclusive Wealth to Promote Sustainable Development” based on 85 publications. This cluster explored the mechanism through which natural capital accounting promote sustainable development. Traditional measures of economic development such as GDP, GDP per capita and HDI focused the produced and human capital and completely ignored the natural capital (Zawojska, 2011). Natural Capital Accounting gives monetary value to all the natural resources and accounts it as an economic asset (Lange, 2007). Moreover, inclusive wealth is evinced as the comprehensive measure of sustainable development which encompasses produced capital, human capital and natural capital altogether in one frame (Polasky et al., 2015). It has been observed that nations achieved economic growth by increasing their GDP while they reduced their natural capital in this race (Gylfason and Zoega, 2006). In the quest for development, nations deteriorated their environment to a great extent and compromised the future generation (Langhelle, 1999). Over time, researchers focused not only on the economic development of current generations in their studies but also highlighted the importance of environmental performance to save resources for future generations (Page, 2007). Researchers started to give the monetary value to natural resources through the inclusion of natural capital into the economic development framework so that the loss can be evaluated and compensated (Capari et al., 2022; Lipton et al., 1995). Natural capital conservation is necessary for future prosperity (Turner and Daily, 2008). Future generations pay the cost of the luxuries of current generations in the form of environmental degradation (Page, 2007). The inclusion of natural capital into policymaking is a strategic step that created the way toward sustainable development (Guerry et al., 2015). Nations then started work on ecosystem preservation and environmental protection policies such as green agricultural practices, reforestation programs, conservation of underland species and green finance. (Rudnicki et al., 2023).

The concept of comprehensive wealth shifted the focus of researchers toward that development must not be done at the cost of the environment (Radosevic et al., 2019). Economies are nourished through green practices that ensures sustainable development (Azevedo et al., 2011). Ultimately, the inclusion of natural capital and inclusive wealth into policymaking guarantees sustainable development because the true picture of economic prosperity can be achieved through environmental integration with economic considerations (Ekins, 2014).

Cluster 3 is represented through blue color and contains 40 publications which are titled “Impact of Telecommunication and Female Participation to Ensure Economic Growth.” This cluster explained the role of telecommunication and female participation to acquire economic growth. Telecommunication is the exchange of information through different technologies over long distance (Li, 2019). The revolutionized step of telecommunication flourished in many sectors especially the agriculture sector in developing countries such as Africa because there is a lack of technological and financial access to limited market information (Saidu et al., 2017). Furthermore, this has increased the role of female participation, especially in the agriculture sector as their main issues have been resolved through the inclusion of telecommunication (Osabohien et al., 2021). Technological innovation played a critical role in the procurement of economic growth as it created a bunch of opportunities for women to participate in a highly productive way (Rothwell, 1984). After the technological revolution, researchers highlighted the importance of technological advancement in every sector of the economy (Caselli, 1999). The digital revolution provides efficient insights that fill the economic disparities (Dreyer et al., 2006). As it allows access to financial services and digital banking which bridge the gender gap in entrepreneurship (Clarke, 2012). Women faced multiple barriers of limited access to digital tools, which was facilitated through the telecommunication revolution (Gavish, 1995). This has increased women’s entrepreneurship, which is evinced by the injections to the economy (Yadav and Unni, 2016). Digital inclusion reduces many economic disparities such as the gender gap through the provision of technological and financial access to women and female participation in economic growth and prosperity (Alhassan and Adam, 2021).

Cluster 4 is represented through yellow color and contains 19 publications which is titled “Role of Structural Transformation and Mobile Banking in Globalization and Inclusive Development.” This cluster explained the role of structural transformation and mobile banking in globalization and inclusive development. Structural transformation refers to the change of the economy’s composition over time in the sense that the economy shifts toward high-productive sectors from low-productive sectors (Herrendorf et al., 2014). The technological revolution has made this happen through the inclusion of digital advancement (Caselli, 1999). Earlier economies struggled to meet the global level requirements due to a lack of digitalization (Serkina et al., 2022). But after digital inclusion in every sector, nations found a road map that leads to globalization (Ahmed, 2024). Globalization represents how world economies are interconnected to each other at the global level to maximize their gains and ensure welfare at a relatively low cost through trade policies, technological transformation and relative interdependence (Robertson and White, 2007).

Moreover, researchers focused on the importance of collective welfare rather than just the progress of particular sectors of the economy (Alcock, 2016). Inclusive development encompasses the characteristics of collective welfare as it focuses on all the sectors of society rather than just focusing on a particular sector alone (Pouw and Gupta, 2017). Mobile banking ensured the provision of digital access to all people including marginalized groups (Barnes and Corbitt, 2003). Information technology surged the role of mobile banking to promote global connectedness that boosts globalization which, as a result, guarantees inclusive development across the globe (Pal et al., 2020).

Cluster 5 is represented through purple color and contains 23 publications which are titled “Explore the Impact of Globalization and Technological Advancement on Entrepreneurship.” This cluster explained the impact of globalization and technological advancement on entrepreneurship. In the world of entrepreneurs, the concepts of globalization and technological innovation broaden the area of opportunities in the business landscape (Archibugi and Iammarino, 2002). Globalization expands the global markets which creates more job opportunities all over the world. Furthermore, technological inclusion in all the segments of society (Srinivas, 1995). Technological inclusion created different ways for men and women to accelerate their careers through the adoption of multiple segregate and joint ventures (Agyekum et al., 2022). Today is the time when everyone is in the race to be an entrepreneur but there is always been the hindrance of lack of opportunities in this marathon (Blanchflower and Oswald, 1998). The major global issues of poverty and unemployment can be beautifully addressed through the inclusion of productive entrepreneurship in the wool of the economy (Acs et al., 2013). To resolve this lack of access issue, globalization and technological advancements played a critical strategic role to bridge the gap in entrepreneurship (Ashford and Hall, 2011).

Cluster 6 is represented through sky blue color and contains 74 publications which is titled “Energy Policy, Economic Transformation and Sustainable Development.” This cluster explored how energy policies and economic transformation are linked to sustainable development. Energy policies reflect the countries’ development situation very keenly (Lu et al., 2020). Over time, the world recognized the importance of economic transformation to secure development (Prokopowicz and Matosek, 2017). The strategic shift from low-productive sector to high-productive sector widens the road toward sustainable development (McMillan et al., 2014). Urbanization, industrialization and technological innovation made the fabrics of economic transformation that stem toward sustainability (Chow, 2015). Along with that, it has been seen that energy security remained a big hurdle in the path to economic progress (Ang et al., 2015). The increasing energy demand especially from developing countries created a large gap in demand and supply markets (Wolfram et al., 2012). A clean affordable, accessible and reliable source of energy is of utmost importance in today’s world where climate change challenges push the world toward destruction (Bioenergy, 2009). There presented a lot of research that pointed out the challenge of global energy security, which needs to be resolved to acquire sustainable development (Sovacool, 2012). The increasing energy demand, especially through developing economies, highlighted the importance of energy security and a need for economic transformation throughout the world to secure sustainable development (Lee et al., 2022).

Cluster 7 is represented through orange color and contains 41 publications which is titled “Integrate Green Energy Policies to Resolve Environmental Concerns and Ensure Inclusive Development.” This cluster explained how green energy policies resolve environmental concerns and lead to Inclusive Development. The concept of development has been changed after the focus of the world shifted toward environmental concerns (Weigel and Weigel, 1978). Green energy policies especially play a critical role to ensuring sustainable development (Pegels et al., 2018). The rising issue of climate change such as increasing temperatures at the global level, rising sea levels, floods and field fires concentrated the world’s attention on environmental preservation (Akintunde, 2017).

As the world is facing critical environmental challenges, there is an urgent need to find out the environment-friendly solutions (Nguyen et al., 2023). The integration of the concept of green energy policies opens the gateway toward environmental conservation (Huang et al., 2022). Green energy policies stress green energy that comes up through renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, air and water (Gibson et al., 2017). Inclusive development encompasses the characteristics of collective welfare as it focuses on all the sectors of society rather than just a particular sector alone (Pouw and Gupta, 2017). The global issues of inequality, poverty and unemployment can be strategically addressed through the inclusion of green practices that collectively contribute to inclusive development (Pouw and Gupta, 2017).

The implementation of green energy policies proved to be the best strategic way to get rid of environmental destruction and combat climate change challenges (Omer, 2008). Green energy policies incentivize economic development with environment-friendly techniques (Zhang and Kong, 2022). The dual advantage of green energy is of utmost importance to acquire sustainability as the economic progress of the current generation is not at the cost of future generations (Soni, 2015). Moreover, technological advancements in renewable energy sources eased the provision of green energy at a large scale throughout the globe, which guarantees the inclusive development (Veeramalli et al., 2024). The whole discussion indicates that there are three main dimensions of inclusive wealth based on literature that are named technology and finance, environment and sustainability and socioeconomic transformation, Moreover, the environment and sustainability dimension is divided into two dimensions named natural capital accounting and sustainable development; green policies and environment sustainability. Furthermore, green policies have been divided into two dimensions; structural transformation and mobile banking; globalization and technological advancement in entrepreneurship.

Coword analysis explores four influential topics that emerge for future trend evolution and provide the future research agenda. All four clusters were examined and discussed below.

Cluster 1 is represented in red color and contains 39 publication keywords that occur repeatedly with another keyword. The representative keywords are Access, Adaptation, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Agriculture, Challenges, Ecosystem Services, Natural Capital, Natural Capital Accounting, Policy, Management, Governance, Sustainability, Tourism, Water and World, which repeatedly co-occur with other keywords. So based on these representative keywords, this study develop an emerging topic titled “Integration of Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Natural Capital Accounting to Conserve Biodiversity.” This cluster explored that in the future researchers should explore how sustainable agricultural practices and natural capital accounting compensate for biodiversity loss. Sustainable agricultural practices and the account for natural capital conserve biodiversity through the inclusion of environmentally friendly policies that maintain the ecosystem and reduce environmental degradation (Piñeiro et al., 2020). Natural capital includes all the renewable and nonrenewable natural resources such as solar, air, water, wind, coal, natural gas and minerals, respectively, which stabilize the ecological maintenance (Barbier, 2019). Sustainable agricultural practices ensure that agricultural production does not come up at the cost of loss of biodiversity (Rehman et al., 2022). Infect through technological advancement such as organic farming provides green agricultural food that is produced while considering the environmental conservation (Khan et al., 2021). As the world is facing the issues of growing population, urbanization and food security, there is a need to expand agriculture production to meet the demands of growing population (Spiertz and Ewert, 2009). This is also important while increasing agricultural output to make sure that it must not be at the cost of the environment (Tilman, 1999).

Sustainable agricultural practices guarantee sustainable development as is acquired through the maintenance of biodiversity loss (Wezel et al., 2014). Natural capital accounting remained a comprehensive approach toward stabilizing biodiversity and preserving the environment (Hein et al., 2020). Natural capital accounting gives monetary value to all the natural resources and accounts for it as an economic asset (Ruijs et al., 2019). The inclusion of natural capital accounting and sustainable agricultural practices into the framework of economic progress will lead toward sustainable development (Wackernagel et al., 1999). As today’s world is prey to climate disasters, researchers should focus on to explore or to explain the best ways that can enhance economic progress with environmental preservation (Fisher et al., 1972). The integration of natural capital accounting and sustainable agricultural practices are the key elements that can promote sustainable development through conservation of biodiversity (Meijer et al., 2020). And there is a growing need to figure out more ways in this line of future research agenda to acquire sustainable development.

Cluster 2 represented through green color and contains 28 publication keywords that are co-occurred with other keywords repeatedly. This study identifies a new emerging research agenda with the title of “Strengthen the Financial and Technological Institutions Increase the Global Competitiveness to Ensure Inclusive Development.” This cluster advised researchers to explore how strong financial and technological institutions increase global competitiveness and guarantee inclusive development. Inclusive development guarantees the equitable provision of all the resources and opportunities to all segments of society (Pouw and Gupta, 2017). The financial institution gives access to financial resources such as banking facilities, credit access and insurance dealings (Kidwell et al., 2016), whereas technological institutions provide digital advancement, technological innovation and innovative infrastructure quality (Nelson and Nelson, 2002). Researchers highlighted the provision of such resources as an injection to the economy (Nelson, 2011). Strong financial and technological institutions provide equitable access to financial and technological resources to all segments of society, which stems to inclusive development (Stankevičienė and Kabulova, 2022). Effective functioning of these institutions reduces the global issues of poverty and unemployment, which foster inclusive development (Sabir et al., 2019). Financial institutions bridge the gap between economic disparities through the provision of equitable access of financial resources and support all the small and medium enterprises (Amis et al., 2017). Digital financing through microfinance played a critical role to strengthen financial institutions through their reliable collective network (Ozili, 2018).

The link between financial and technological institutions guarantees inclusive development through the provision of different resources and tools to all the individuals in the society, which link up together and create an immense impact globally (Dong et al., 2022). So, to acquire inclusive development, there is a need to work on what way financial and technological institutions can be strengthened (Asongu and Nwachukwu, 2017). The future research agenda should focus on provision of the equitable access of financial and technological resources to every individual in society to promote inclusive development and long-term economic prosperity.

Cluster 3 is represented through blue color and contains 19 publications which is titled “Green Labor Market and Green Finance to Promote Inclusive Wealth.” This cluster explored how in what way green labor markets and green finance promotes inclusion to ensure sustainable development. The green labor market refers the green economy which is based on renewable energy sources, environmental sustainability and climate change alleviation (Bowen, 2012). Green finance basically are the green bonds which is a crucial step that governments take to mitigate climate change scenario (Lindenberg, 2014). Moreover, traditional measures of economic development such as GDP, GDP per capita and HDI only focused on the produced and human capital while completely ignored the environment (Kumar and Sharma, 2014). Inclusive wealth is evinced as a comprehensive measure of sustainable development, which encompasses produced capital, human capital and natural capital altogether in one frame (Polasky et al., 2015). It has been observed that nations achieved economic growth by increasing their GDP while they reduced their natural capital in this race (Costanza and Daly, 1992).

In the quest for development, nations deteriorate their environment to a great extent and compromised the future generation (Bernstein, 2001). With time researchers focused not only on the economic development of current generations but also on securing future generations through considering the late deteriorated environmental impacts (Mitlin, 1992). Researchers started to give the monetary value to natural resources through the inclusion of natural capital into the economic development framework so that the loss can be evaluated and compensated (Lipton et al., 1995). Inclusive wealth is a comprehensive approach to economic progress as it provides a more realistic way beyond GDP to ensure sustainable development (Polasky et al., 2015). Because it takes into account the natural capital along with the produced and human capital (Managi and Kumar, 2018). Natural capital conservation is necessary for future prosperity (Costanza et al., 1997). Future generations pay the cost of the luxuries of current generations in the form of environmental degradation (Revesz and Shahabian, 2010). The inclusion of natural capital into policymaking is a strategic step that created the way toward sustainable development (Bateman and Mace, 2020). Along with that green finance brings out investments in all sectors of the economy, aligns the financial resources with the environment and ensures that it must be in sustainable environment-friendly projects (Sachs et al., 2019). A green labor market creates jobs in green industries and widens the market landscape reduces the employment level to a certain extent along with it positively contributes to poverty reduction (Bowen, 2012). Together these environment-friendly strategies bring out an effective dominance to mitigate climate change disasters through the conservation of natural resources (Chiras and Reganold, 2010). Due to the increase in global temperature and continuous shaking, the climate change patterns stressed the need to be focused on increasing inclusive wealth because it encompasses produced capital, human capital and natural capital altogether in one matrix (Lindsey and Dahlman, 2020). Future research should focus on identifying ways to promote inclusive wealth, as the green economy and green growth remain the most viable solutions to combat disastrous climate change and achieve sustainable development.

Cluster 4 is represented through yellow color and contains 14 publications which is titled “Investment in Business and Infrastructure Leads Inclusive Growth.” This cluster explained inclusive growth can be increased through investment in business and infrastructure. Inclusive growth refers to the growth in all the sectors of the economy, no one is left behind in economic progress and everyone enjoys equitable access to resources and opportunities (Ranieri and Almeida Ramos, 2013). Investments are injections to the economy whether these are in business or infrastructure (Nguyen et al., 2014). Investments in infrastructure include equipment, buildings, transportation and other produced capital (Gramlich, 1994). Business investment encompasses investments in small and medium enterprises, which creates more job opportunities, reduces unemployment and widens the business landscape (Fisher, 2007). Infrastructure development allows efficient production, connects people under a managed productive environment and improves business, which collectively creates an immense impact overall to acquire inclusive growth (Srinivasu and Rao, 2013).

Infrastructure development boosts economic activities, removes regional disparities and guarantees that there is collective progress; everyone must enjoy the fruit of growth and no one is left behind in the acquisition of economic prosperity (Manggat et al., 2018). Business investment leads to technological innovation in all segments, which ensures the environment-friendly techniques that promote entrepreneurship across the globe (Lee, 2004). Collectively, investment in infrastructure and business creates business-friendly environment, widens the market landscape through the provision of more jobs and creates wealth that reduces the global issues of poverty and unemployment to a great extent and contributes to the overall growth of society (Foxon et al., 2015). The future research agendas should focus on increasing investment in infrastructure and business and finding out the related ventures that contribute positively to the betterment of all the sectors of the economy, which ensure the long-term economic progress and ultimately inject to inclusive growth. Figure 11 indicates the emerging research trends.

This section of the literature review conducted a content analysis of inclusive wealth. First, the data is collected from the Dimensions database. Table 8 explains the criteria selected to gather data. This database is used to conduct bibliometric analysis because of its accuracy and rigorous viability (Pranckutė, 2021). It is the most widely used database to carry out bibliometric research worldwide (Zhu and Liu, 2020). The table presents the Database Set. The “Period” consists of the publications from 2004 to 2024. The “Search Field” covered the specific topic of research, which is “Inclusive Wealth.” The “Search Keywords” shows a search query that is “Inclusive Wealth.” The “Citation Topics” shows all the interdisciplinary research related to inclusive wealth. The “Documents Type” is selected as “Articles” and English as “Language” is selected. After the data is gathered, the bibliometric software VOSviewer 1.6.18 is used to conduct quantitative analysis. This presented the tabular visualization of all the documents in citation analysis.

Table 9 shows content analysis for all the publications on inclusive wealth with their summaries along with citations per each document. This is the tabular representation of content analysis which shows in what way literature published on the particular concept of inclusive wealth. This analysis shows the presented literature on inclusive wealth and explores all the directions in which researchers used inclusive wealth. Most researchers claimed and used inclusive wealth as a comprehensive and more reliable measure of sustainable development because it encompasses produced capital, human capital and natural capital altogether in one frame. Through this content analysis, this study finds out the past and current evolutionary trends that suggest the future research agenda regarding this particular field.

This study conducted a bibliometric literature review on the topic of inclusive wealth. Through bibliometric analysis, this study unveiled the most influential publications, their citations, the interaction between authors and their works, past and current evolutionary patterns, the emerging themes and along with future research agendas. The concept of inclusive wealth came to the limelight in 2012 and the presented content analysis showed how it went with the time. Bibliometric analysis is conducted through four techniques, which are named citation analysis, coauthorship analysis, cocitation analysis and co-occurrence analysis. The citation analysis discovered how publications, sources, countries and organizations are ranked by average citations related to a particular field of inclusive wealth. Asongu and Gupa are the top contributor authors in this field ranked by citation. The Middlesex University of England, Yale the University of the USA and the Utrecht University of Netherlands are the top institutions ranked by average citation. England, the Netherlands and USA are the top countries ranked by average citations that published most of the work regarding this particular field.

The coauthorship analysis explained the interaction between authors, organizations and countries in the work related to inclusive wealth. The top authors that collaborated are explained in Table 5 and the top organizations and countries that are collaborated in this field are explained in Table 7. The cocitation analysis explored the hotspot themes that represent the evolutionary trends in the existing literature. This study created seven clusters that represented the hotspot themes titled “Role of Fintech (Financial Technology) in Inclusive Green Growth,” “Natural Capital Accounting and Inclusive Wealth to Promote Sustainable Development,” “Telecommunication and Female Participation in Economic Development,” “Role of Structural Transformation and Mobile Banking in Inclusive Development,” “Explore the Impact of Globalization and Technological Advancement on Sustainable Development,” “Energy Policy, Economic Transformation, and Sustainable Development” and “Integrate Green Energy Policies to Resolve Environmental Concerns and Ensure Inclusive Development.” The coword analysis analyzed the keyword’s interaction to explore future research agendas. This study created four clusters that probe into the direction of future research. This study proposed four future research agendas which are named “Integration of Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Natural Capital Accounting to Conserve Biodiversity,” “Strengthen the Financial and Technological Institutions, Increase the Global Competitiveness to Ensure Inclusive Development,” “Green Labor Market and Green Finance to Promote Inclusive Wealth” and “Innovation in Business and Infrastructure leads Inclusive Growth.”

The presented content analysis of inclusive wealth revealed the research gap in this field. The content analysis shows the presented literature on inclusive wealth and explores all the directions in which researchers used inclusive wealth. Most researchers claimed and used inclusive wealth as a comprehensive and more reliable measure of sustainable development because it encompasses produced capital, human capital and natural capital altogether in one frame. There is significant theoretical and practical contributions to this study. Through citation analysis, this study found the most influential publication, author, institution and country related to inclusive wealth. Along with that, this study highlights the past and current patterns in this field as well as traces the future trends. The thematic literature provides a bulk knowledge related to the past and current evolution of the concept of inclusion and related to it depending upon the existing literature. Emerging trends show the future research agendas and a direction of research for coming researchers in this particular field of inclusive wealth. The practical implication of this study is that it provides a strategic way for researchers and policymakers to align with the targeted sustainable development goals. Bibliometric analysis comes up with a few limitations. First, it does not include all the citations of recent papers that underestimates the existing impact in comparison with older publications. Second, the most reliable source of data collection, the WoS, can also create a bias if a researcher needs to filter the data to check whether all the relevant articles are included or not. Moreover, other databases such as Dimensions or Scopus can also yield different results. Despite these flaws, this analysis provides significant information regarding a particular field of study and also directs the researchers toward relevant future research areas in the particular field.

This study provides important insights into the field of inclusive wealth, but several limitations are noted. First, this study extracted the data solely from the WoS database, which, although reputable and authentic but does not capture all relevant work, particularly from nonindexed journals, regional sources, books and reports. Second, although careful data search strategies have been adopted but some relevant studies may have been missed due to variations in terminology. Third, bibliometric measures like citation counts tend to favor older publications, which may underrepresent emerging research. Fourth, while this study maps patterns and trends, it does not assess the quality or real-world impact of the research. Finally, despite efforts to clean and standardize the data, minor inconsistencies may persist. Fifth, this study used data from dimensions only for content analysis. Future studies could address these issues by using multiple databases, incorporating grey literature and combining quantitative and qualitative methods for a more comprehensive view.