Environmental, social, and governance-driven sustainable tourism management in small and medium enterprises

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies face increasing pressure to meet sustainability goals while staying competitive. This study explores how external forces and internal practices shape sustainable tourism management among technology-based SMEs in Bangladesh. Using the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) framework, we examine how institutional requirements, market competition, and green human resource management influence the adoption of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices and business analytics capability. These, in turn, affect sustainable tourism management performance. The analysis is based on 760 SMEs using structural equation modeling (SEM), propensity score matching (PSM), and fuzzy-set qualitative-comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results show that institutional pressure, market competition, and green human resource management all play an important role in encouraging SMEs to adopt ESG practices and develop business analytics capability. Both ESG adoption and analytics, in turn, make a strong contribution to sustainable tourism performance. The PSM analysis, which compares firms with high and low levels of ESG and analytics, confirms these findings: SMEs that adopt ESG practices achieve about 19% higher sustainability scores, while those with strong analytics capability perform about 17% better than others. The fsQCA results further reveal that there is no single path to achieving sustainability. Instead, different combinations of ESG practices, analytics capability, and competitive conditions can all lead to strong outcomes, highlighting the diverse strategies SMEs can follow. This research demonstrates the importance of ESG and data-driven decision-making for SME sustainability and offers practical guidance for entrepreneurs and policymakers working to strengthen tourism in emerging markets.