Sustainability Data as Infrastructure: A Systematic Review of ESG Disclosure, Scope 3 Carbon Accounting and Measurement Capability in Tourism, 2024–2026
Keywords:
Scope 3 emissions, ESG disclosure, tourism carbon accounting, CSRD, SEEA, Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism, SME data capability, measurement dependencyAbstract
Between 2024 and 2026 the measurement of tourism sustainability changed status. It ceased to be a voluntary reporting activity undertaken by large firms for reputational reasons and became an infrastructural requirement transmitted through value chains by regulation, procurement and statistical standardisation. Three developments define the period. The United Nations Statistical Commission adopted the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism in 2024, giving the sector its first globally endorsed measurement architecture. Consumption-based accounting placed tourism’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions at 8.8 per cent, growing considerably faster than the global economy. And the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, substantially narrowed by the 2026 Omnibus package, nonetheless established a data-request cascade that reaches far below its own scope thresholds into the small and medium-sized enterprises that constitute the majority of tourism supply. This review synthesises thirty-two peer-reviewed studies published between 2024 and 2026 to establish what is known about tourism’s sustainability data infrastructure and where the knowledge base is thinnest. A configurative synthesis identifies five clusters: the measurement of the tourism carbon footprint and its boundaries; ESG disclosure practice and its determinants in tourism firms; value-chain and Scope 3 accounting; the statistical and satellite-account layer; and the small-firm data capability gap. The review proposes the Data Infrastructure Cascade model, which specifies four transmission stages from standard-setter to small supplier and identifies the point at which the cascade breaks. It introduces the construct of measurement dependency, describing the condition in which a firm’s ability to remain in a value chain depends on data it cannot generate. Seven propositions and a research agenda are advanced. The review argues that tourism’s decarbonisation is currently constrained less by unwillingness than by unmeasurability.
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