Guest editorial: Corporate digital responsibility in hospitality and tourism in the <i>International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management</i>

Digital transformation (DT) is the comprehensive integration of digital technologies into all aspects of organizational operations, leading to fundamental changes in business processes, models and customer engagement strategies (Carroll et al., 2023; Nadkarni and Prügl, 2021; Vial, 2019). It involves not only the adoption of digital data (i.e. digitization) and digital technologies (i.e. digitalization) but also a cultural shift that promotes innovation, agility and continuous improvement (Westerman et al., 2014). The importance of DT lies in its ability to enhance organizational competitiveness and adaptability in a rapidly evolving digital economy (Vial, 2019). It enables firms to streamline operations, improve customer experiences, make data-driven decisions and foster innovation (Fitzgerald et al., 2014; Vial, 2019). The key objectives of DT include enhancing customer-centricity through personalized digital experiences, improving operational efficiency via automation, fostering innovation in products and services, increasing organizational agility and leveraging data analytics for strategic decision-making (Carroll et al., 2023; Nadkarni and Prügl, 2021). When successfully implemented, DT can result in increased revenue, stronger customer loyalty, improved employee productivity, the development of new digital offerings and a sustainable competitive advantage in the global marketplace (Vial, 2019).According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) 2022 survey, more than 60% of corporate managers listed corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors as a primary focus for selecting and prioritizing digital capabilities, and more than 80% of companies have a plan to increase their investments in sustainability (Hutchinson et al., 2022). ESG is an emerging practice and is expected to play an essential role in corporate transition management toward corporate sustainability in hospitality and tourism (Back, 2025). While an increasing number of corporations adopt ESG concepts and practices to improve their corporate sustainability performance and achieve the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (Back, 2024, 2025), corporate leaders and executives find that putting ESG as the top priority in corporate decisions does not guarantee their market success (Pureza and Lee, 2020).ESG-related opportunities and challenges include decarbonization strategies, carbon net-zero strategies, employee health and safety, modern slavery in the corporate value chain and corporate transparency with regulatory compliance (Lee and Vachon, 2016). As the concept of ESG has multiple types of corporate sustainable development, the characteristics of ESG are complex to focus and implement efficiently without losing corporate competitiveness (Lee and Gunarathne, 2021). Achieving ESG goals as a competitive advantage requires integrating digital data, technology, and capabilities into corporate sustainability management. In particular, rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) applications (e.g. service robots, chatbots, generative AI) and DT bring positive impacts and also critical ethical dilemmas to service firms and customers (Dogru et al., 2025; Lee et al., 2023; Wirtz et al., 2023) and selection biases in social media platforms (Zheng et al., 2024). Thus, corporate digital responsibility (CDR) is considered a critical tool and corporate strategy to accelerate service firms’ sustainable transitions and development in the DT era (Lobschat et al., 2021).CDR refers to the principles underpinning a service firm’s ethical, fair, and protective use of data and technology when engaging with customers within their digital service ecosystem (Writz et al., 2023, p. 173). Since diverse AI applications are based on heavy use of corporate and customer data for service innovation (Park et al., 20233), disruptive innovation (Lee et al., 2023) and machine learning (ML) based predictive modeling (Lee et al., 2021), CDR plays a critical role in measuring business performance and creating culture, processes and behaviors for sustainable business success. In hospitality management, CDR is related to various issues, including ethical, social, technological, economic and environmental issues (Lee et al., 2025). Based on these five core elements of CDR in hospitality and tourism, we define CDR as “the set of shared values and norms in the digital ecosystem, requiring proactive governance and voluntary-based guidelines of digital technologies and data management to ensure ethical, social, technological, economic, and environmental aspects and conduct secure, transparent, and sustainable digital practices that foster stakeholders’ trust and well-being” (Lee et al., 2025).Furthermore, AI and ML brought new digital capabilities to various industries (George and Schillebeeckx, 2022). ESG digitization, transferring analog data to digital data, has increased the visibility of CDR practices to various stakeholders in business sustainability and performance in the DT era. Demands for accountability drive companies to disclose their environmental and social footprint for ESG reporting. Connecting digital capabilities to the CDR and ESG agenda enables the management of current ESG-related challenges and opportunities more efficiently and effectively. Therefore, this special issue aims to enhance our understanding of CDR and ESG digitization in corporate sustainability management and digital transformation for hospitality and tourism organizations. In particular, this special issue presents 11 cutting-edge research papers about perceptions toward CDR practices and communication, CDR outcomes, and ESG practices and performance for various stakeholders (i.e. consumers, employees, firms) in the hospitality and tourism context.von Richthofen and Culiberg (2025) develop a conceptual framework for CDR in the sharing economy by extending the value–balance–accountability (VBA) model to include digital irresponsibility and associated tensions. Using Airbnb and Uber as illustrative cases, the authors categorize CDR into three dimensions: value (economic, social and environmental), balance (algorithmic governance, dynamic policy alignment and mediation) and accountability (transparency, trustworthiness, equality and privacy). The authors highlight how SE platforms generate value but also risk value destruction through misrepresentation, discrimination, and privacy violations. The framework presents tensions between stakeholder interests, such as autonomy versus control and transparency versus privacy, and shows how platforms navigate conflicting institutional logics. By integrating CDR into the VBA framework, the study contributes to both sharing economy, CSR, CDR literature, offering a holistic view that captures responsible and irresponsible digital practices. Practical implications include guiding sharing economy platforms, regulators, and policymakers in assessing digital conduct and managing stakeholder tensions. The authors call for future research to explore the framework’s applicability across sectors and deepen the understanding of digital responsibility in platform governance.Kang et al. (2025) demonstrate the interactive effects of corporate privacy responsibility (CPR) and customer education (CE) on consumer responses in the smart hotel context. Using a 2 × 2 experimental design, the study reveals that when hotels demonstrate strong privacy practices and simultaneously educate customers about digital services and practices, consumers show significantly higher levels of trust, more favorable brand attitudes and stronger intentions to visit. The study employs the source–outcome of trust theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to explain these effects, showing that CE enables central route processing, whereby consumers engage deeply with privacy-related information and form durable trust-based evaluations. In contrast, low CE leads to peripheral processing, relying on superficial cues. The study further finds that trust mediates the relationship between CPR and brand attitudes, which in turn lead to visit intentions. These findings underscore the importance of integrating ethical digital practices with consumer empowerment strategies to foster brand credibility and loyalty. The research findings advocate for hospitality firms to prioritize transparency in data handling and to invest in educational tools that enhance customer understanding and engagement in digitally enhanced service environments.Chaudhary et al. (2025) investigate the impact of CDR on green brand equity (GBE) and propose a research framework in which CDR drives sustainability outcomes through three mediators, including green technology (GT), responsible tourism practices (RTP) and responsible marketing. Employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the study demonstrates that CDR significantly enhances the adoption of GT, the implementation of RTP, and the execution of responsible marketing, leading to GBE. By integrating the resource-based view (RBV) and the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, this study conceptualizes CDR as a strategic asset that enables hotels to differentiate themselves in an increasingly eco-conscious marketplace. The research findings reveal that transparent digital practices, ethical marketing, and community-engaged tourism initiatives collectively strengthen brand reputation and customer loyalty. By validating multiple sufficient configurations for achieving high GBE, the study offers a nuanced understanding of how digital ethics and sustainability converge to create competitive advantage. Embedding CDR into core hotel operations and branding strategies is essential for cultivating trust, attracting environmentally aware guests, and positioning hotels as leaders in sustainable hospitality.Sung and Lee (2025) explore how interactive ESG communication – specifically mutuality and openness – shapes consumers’ normative perceptions and brand advocacy behavior in the restaurant industry. Grounded in the theory of normative social behavior (TNSB), the study demonstrates that mutuality in ESG messaging significantly enhances descriptive norms, which in turn positively affect both injunctive norms and brand advocacy on social media. Openness, however, does not significantly affect descriptive norms, suggesting that transparency alone may not be sufficient to shape consumer perceptions of normative behavior. The study also reveals that injunctive norms exert a direct influence on brand advocacy and that online group identity moderates the relationship between descriptive and injunctive norms, but not between descriptive norms and advocacy behavior. These findings highlight the importance of two-way, empathetic communication in shaping consumer engagement with ESG initiatives. The authors argue that mutuality fosters a sense of shared values and social validation, which strengthens normative influence and drives advocacy. The study contributes to the ESG and digital communication literature by integrating TNSB with social identity theory and offering actionable strategies for restaurant marketers to enhance consumer engagement through interactive digital platforms.Lin et al. (2025) explore how hospitality employees emotionally and cognitively respond to data breaches, emphasizing the strategic role of CDR within the broader ESG framework. Through a mixed-methods design comprising qualitative interviews, experimental manipulation, and a large-scale survey, the study identifies threat susceptibility as a key antecedent to psychological contract violation (PCV), which in turn influences two distinct behavioral outcomes: customer-oriented deviance (COD) and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). The authors demonstrate that employees who perceive their organizations as vulnerable to digital threats are more likely to experience PCV, leading either to rule-bending actions that favor customers or to ethically questionable behaviors aimed at protecting the organization. These relationships are moderated by customer-based perspective-taking and employee–company identification, respectively. The study extends attribution and social exchange theories to explain how employees assess organizational failures and navigate the tension between loyalty and ethical conduct. By integrating CDR into ESG governance, the authors argue for a proactive approach to digital ethics and cybersecurity, offering actionable insights for hospitality firms seeking to enhance resilience and stakeholder trust in the face of digital crises.Shin and Jang (2025) examine the barriers to implementing CDR in the hospitality and tourism industry, emphasizing the impact of psychological and organizational dynamics on employee compliance. Drawing on social identity theory, this study identifies four key barriers – lack of awareness, economic constraints, technological complexity and lack of organizational focus – that contribute to attitudinal ambivalence among employees and reduce their intentions to comply with CDR initiatives. Using SEM and multigroup analysis, the authors demonstrate that attitudinal ambivalence mediates the relationship between perceived barriers and compliance intentions, while organizational trust partially moderates these effects. Notably, economic constraints emerged as the most significant deterrent to compliance, while the lack of organizational focus does not directly affect compliance intentions but positively influences ambivalence. The research findings offer a better understanding of how employees’ psychological responses to organizational challenges shape their engagement with digital ethics. The study provides practical insights for managers to foster trust, reduce ambivalence, and enhance employee alignment with digital responsibility goals, thereby supporting sustainable DT in the hospitality and tourism industry.Ullah et al. (2025) investigate how digital transformational leadership (DTL), digital organizational culture (DOC), and proactive employee behavior (taking charge, TC) influence organizational resilience (OR) in the hospitality sector, with digital corporate social responsibility (DCSR) as a moderating factor. Grounded in dynamic capabilities theory (DCT), the study uses a time-lagged survey of 380 hotel employees in Beijing, China, and applies structural equation modeling to test direct, mediated, and moderated relationships. Findings reveal that DTL significantly enhances OR, both directly and indirectly through DOC and TC, with a serial mediation effect confirming that DTL fosters a digital culture that empowers proactive behavior, which in turn strengthens resilience. DCSR positively moderates the DTL–OR relationship, suggesting that ethical digital practices amplify the impact of leadership on resilience. The study contributes to DCT by integrating ethical and cultural dimensions into the resilience-building process and highlights the importance of leadership-driven digital agility in collectivist contexts. Managerial implications include fostering a supportive digital culture, incentivizing proactive employee initiatives and embedding ethical digital strategies to enhance adaptability and stakeholder trust in times of disruption.Lunkes et al. (2025) examine how online guest reviews and hotel digital responsibility (HDR) – a hospitality-specific extension of CDR – influence ESG practices and sustainability performance. Using data from 196 Brazilian hotels and over 212,000 TripAdvisor reviews, the study applies sentiment analysis and SEM to assess how positive and negative ESG-related comments affect HDR. The findings reveal that positive social-related reviews enhance HDR, while negative governance-related reviews diminish it. Environmental reviews, whether positive or negative, show no significant impact, likely due to their limited visibility to guests. HDR, in turn, significantly improves environmental, social, and governance practices, which collectively enhance hotel sustainability performance. The study introduces HDR as a strategic framework that bridges digital stakeholder engagement with operational sustainability, emphasizing the role of ethical digital practices in translating guest feedback into actionable ESG strategies. This study offers methodological innovations by combining text mining with ESG measurement and provides practical guidance for hotels to develop automated sentiment monitoring systems and integrate digital feedback into sustainability planning. The research contributes to the evolving discourse on digital ethics in hospitality, highlighting the importance of responsive and transparent digital governance in achieving long-term sustainability goals.Kim et al. (2025a, 2025b) investigate how hospitality firms can enhance ESG performance through the development of digital dynamic capabilities (DDC) and CDR. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory and stakeholder theory, the study conceptualizes DDC as comprising digital sensing, seizing and reconfiguring, and examines their influence on both substantive and symbolic CDR. Using survey data from 257 hotel firms across 42 countries and PLS-SEM, the authors find that all three DDC elements positively affect both forms of CDR. Substantive and symbolic CDRs, in turn, significantly improve ESG digitization, which mediates their impact on ESG performance. Notably, neither form of CDR directly enhances ESG performance, underscoring the critical role of digitization as a bridging mechanism. The study also confirms the mediating roles of CDR and ESG digitization in the relationship between DDC and ESG outcomes. These findings advance the literature by differentiating the strategic roles of substantive and symbolic digital responsibility and by positioning ESG digitization as a key operational conduit for sustainability transformation. The authors offer practical guidance for hospitality managers to align digital transformation with ESG goals through responsible digital practices and investment in digital infrastructure.Deng et al. (2025) explore the implementation of environmental technology (ET) in hotels and its impact on green performance, using a dual-theoretical lens of technology affordance and constraint theory (TACT) and the imbrication framework. Through a sequential mixed-methods design – comprising a multiple-case study of 11 hotels and a survey of 364 properties in Hong Kong and mainland China – the study identifies a three-stage ET implementation process: perception, preparation, and actualization. Two key imbrications emerge: green governance, which links perception and preparation, and employee training, which bridges preparation and actualization. The authors find that green governance directly enhances green performance, while employee training and customer engagement serially mediate this relationship. The study introduces a TACT-imbrication framework that captures the dynamic interplay between technological affordances, organizational constraints, and socio-technical adaptation. Quantitative analysis confirms the robustness of the model and highlights the central role of human agency in enabling ET to fulfill its sustainability potential. The research contributes to the hospitality literature by unpacking the micro-level mechanisms of ET implementation and by extending the TOE framework to sustainability contexts. Managerial implications include the need for strategic alignment, cross-functional training and stakeholder engagement to optimize ET deployment and achieve measurable environmental outcomes.Kim et al. (2025a, 2025b) examine how food and beverage (F&B) companies can strategically communicate ESG initiatives through mobile ordering platforms to enhance consumer engagement and prosocial behavior. Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors first analyze 29 ESG reports to identify thematic priorities and digital trends, revealing that mobile apps are increasingly used to embed sustainability conduct a 2 × 2 experimental study and focus to test the impact of on consumer show that – and – significantly increase to use the and indirectly intentions. The study theory and social learning theory to explain how psychological and perceived influence consumer behavior. It contributes to ESG communication literature by that enhances both digital engagement and prosocial outcomes. Practical implications include ESG that align with consumers’ psychological and embedding into mobile platforms to foster behavioral and brand concept of CDR aspects of business sustainability and ESG implementation in the digital As CDR is significant in hospitality and tourism this special issue is to and of CDR in corporate consumer behavior, employee and ESG practice in the The and understanding of CDR are expected to improve both and practical of digital in responsible use of digital technologies and data management for transparent and sustainable digital special issue introduces a of that explore both conceptual and to challenges of CDR adoption and implementation in the hospitality and tourism industry. The are by critical research to our understanding of the opportunities and challenges by the and adoption of CDR. The primary of this special issue is to enhance our understanding of CDR and ESG in hospitality and tourism industry, and to new insights into the development of CDR research special issue provides conceptual challenges of CDR in hospitality and tourism is not to of sustainability (i.e. economic, social, and environmental accountability and governance dimensions into CDR. to of CDR is to explore various and in hospitality and tourism By the emerging CDR key aspects of business sustainability and ESG with new and conceptual aspects to for sustainable development and identify new of CDR research in hospitality and tourism this special issue examines the use of CDR from both consumer and employee consumer enhances our understanding of and trust, brand and intentions to visit while employee also to improve our on organizational between consumer loyalty and ethical behavior in hospitality and tourism industry. and of CDR adoption challenges to improve operational digital service practices and business sustainability and ESG implementation in hospitality and tourism foster research and practical development, this special issue to research and and new insights and research These to identify research in to drive new and for better understanding on CDR and related of business sustainability and research papers in this special issue the and of CDR factors and strategies. explore the various that can be into strategic business models at multiple levels and by types of organizations to achieve long-term sustainable development goals using supporting theories and research can be by in further applications of and policy and brand and in hospitality and tourism all authors who papers to this special we to who a significant of in their the