Innovating business models for circular and regenerative outcomes: Carbon insetting practices in European port ecosystems

Ports are strategic hubs within global value chains and face increasing pressure to decarbonize while generating local socioeconomic value. This study examines how European ports frame and justify value chain mitigation actions that resemble carbon insetting in sustainability disclosures shaped by European Union (EU) climate policy and European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)-related accountability pressures. Rather than treating insetting as an operationally verified practice, this study conceptualizes it as a claimability-sensitive construct and analyzes how insetting-like actions are articulated and rendered more or less credible in public reporting. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the knowledge-based view, absorptive capacity, and dynamic capabilities, this study explores how digitalization and knowledge management (KM) are presented as enablers of credible insetting by enhancing measurement, verification, and shared learning across heterogeneous actors. Methodologically, this study employs a qualitative, directed content analysis of sustainability reports and website disclosures from leading European ports to examine how insetting is framed under evolving EU and International Maritime Organization (IMO) climate regimes and in alignment with ESRS. An operational definition of insetting, consistent with Gold Standard and Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) value chain guidance, is developed alongside a coding scheme addressing scope, additionality, accounting boundaries, metrics, and digital enablers. The findings reveal variation in disclosure-based readiness, distinguishing generic decarbonization narratives from insetting-like claims. The analysis shows how ports construct value chain mitigation claims and how disclosure varies in its capacity to support accountability and claimability. This study advances the Insetting-Enabled BMI (IE-BMI) framework as a conceptual synthesis of recurring disclosure-based configurations, providing a theoretically grounded platform for future empirical testing using independent operational evidence.