Equity, governance and the co-creation of value: an integrative framework and research agenda

Abstract

This study examines the intersection of stakeholder engagement and value co-creation in tourism, synthesizing theoretical and empirical contributions spanning two decades of scholarship to develop an integrative governance framework applicable across destination management contexts. A systematic literature review following the PRISMA 2020 protocol was conducted across nine international databases, covering publications from 2004 to 2025. The final sample of 59 peer-reviewed articles was selected through a four-stage screening process combining dual-reviewer eligibility assessment and a 50-point quality scale, yielding a mean quality score of 38.6. Thematic synthesis of the 59-article corpus reveals a shift from transactional stakeholder consultation toward collaborative value ecosystems. The study introduces the COCREATE Model, an eight-dimension framework grounded in the reviewed evidence, and shows, through comparison with five antecedent frameworks, that equity is a constitutive rather than a contextual dimension of co-creation governance, absent from prior integrative models. Fourteen of the 59 articles identify power asymmetry as the primary inhibitor of co-creation outcomes, which grounds this elevation of equity. The COCREATE Model offers destination managers, policymakers and platform developers a set of implementation indicators for auditing the equity, transparency and accountability of co-creation processes, and it provides researchers with a structured 2025–2035 agenda for empirical validation across contrasting destination governance settings. The COCREATE Model is the first framework to integrate service-dominant logic, stakeholder engagement theory and digital governance into a single operational architecture and to position equity as a structural rather than a contextual dimension of co-creation governance.