UNVEILING THE LANGUAGE DYNAMICS IN FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

DOI: https://doie.org/10.65985/APER.2026677187

Authors:

Dr.Pankaj Kumar Srivastava, Dr. Madhavi Dhole, Anguja Agrawal, Dr. Geetanjali Pinto

Keywords:

Foreign Direct Investment, Language, Psychic Distance, Bibliometric analysis, Network analysis

Abstract:

Does language influence foreign direct investment (FDI)? Language reduces transaction costs, which strongly determines FDI location choice decisions. Many factors that influence the FDI location choice such as exchange rate, interest rate policies, agglomeration economies, taxes, and trade policies have been discussed and examined in existing literature. Language and linguistic distance are disregarded as a determinant influencing FDI location choice. This paper aims to evaluate the current research to identify prominent contributors, researched areas, and gaps to suggest future research directions. The paper conducts bibliometric analysis and network analysis (including content analysis) on a sample of 90 articles indexed in Scopus to know the influence of language on FDI. This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) of relevant papers to identify the prominent authors, highly cited papers, and a co citation network to state the scholarly structure. Data analysis is done using Bibliometrix R tool for science mapping (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017), Bibexcel for co-citation analysis (Persson et al., 2009) and VOS viewer software for visualization (Van Eck and Waltman, 2011). As evident from our evaluation, there is scant research in this area and the major focus is on psychic distance research. Language is one of the stimuli which is part of research conducted by previous studies on psychic distance. Results also show that language, as determinants of FDI, mode of investment and methods of entry and language as the transaction cost are prominent topics. Further, the outcomes attained through this SLR can guide future researchers to assess the gaps in this area in a scientific manner.

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