Who Really Runs Sustainable Tourism? Vietnam’s Digital Governance Map Reveals Surprising Power Gaps

Who actually holds the levers of power in sustainable tourism? A new study from Vietnam suggests the answer is far stranger than the usual pecking order of governments, businesses, and tourists would imply. Published in the journal Discover Sustainability, the research by Ngoc Hoa Nguyen of Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration and Chang Jung Christian University, and Wen-Hwa Shyu of Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan, maps the hidden wiring of Vietnam’s national sustainable tourism governance system at a moment when digital transformation is rewiring how tourism is planned, promoted, and policed. The findings challenge one of the most persistent assumptions in sustainability policy: that the stakeholders who matter most are the ones who actually drive the system.

The study’s central discovery is a striking divergence between importance and influence. When 18 Vietnamese experts ranked six stakeholder groups by perceived importance, Central Government came first and Tourism Enterprises second. But when the researchers traced the directional flow of influence through the governance system, a different picture emerged. Tourism Enterprises, despite their enormous systemic prominence, turned out to be net receivers of influence, absorbing more pressure from other actors than they exert. Meanwhile, Knowledge and Research Institutions, which received the lowest importance weight of all six groups, occupy a net-influencing position, quietly shaping the system far beyond their apparent weight. Local Government also sits in the net-influencing camp, while Local Communities and Tourists are classified as effect-oriented, meaning they are largely acted upon rather than acting.

Technically, the study is built on an integrated three-method framework that has become a workhorse of complex decision analysis. First, a two-round Delphi process was used to validate the stakeholder architecture: six groups and twelve sub-factors, refined through iterative expert consensus until judgments stabilized. The Delphi method, developed originally at the RAND Corporation for forecasting, works by anonymously aggregating expert judgments across successive rounds, allowing participants to revise their views without group pressure. Second, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, or AHP, estimated the relative importance of each stakeholder group and sub-factor by structuring the problem into a hierarchy and deriving priority weights from pairwise comparisons. Third, the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, or DEMATEL, assessed the directional interdependencies among the six stakeholder groups, converting expert judgments about who influences whom into a mathematical map of cause-and-effect relationships across the entire system.

DEMATEL is the method that gives the study its relational teeth. Unlike AHP, which produces a static ranking, DEMATEL builds a directed influence matrix from expert assessments of pairwise relationships, then decomposes it into two measures for each actor: prominence, the total degree of systemic involvement, and net influence, the balance between influence exerted and influence received. Actors with positive net influence are classified as causes, driving the system, while those with negative net influence are effects, being driven. This distinction is what allows the study to separate systemic prominence from directional power, a separation that most stakeholder analyses conflate. The result is a system-level portrait of governance that reveals not just who matters, but who moves whom.

The study’s conceptual contribution is equally significant. Rather than treating digital transformation as an autonomous force that automatically drives sustainability, the authors conceptualize it as a governance-embedded coordination mechanism, a tool whose effects depend on the institutional architecture within which it operates. This reframing matters because much of the digital sustainability literature assumes that technology itself, whether booking platforms, smart destination management systems, or data dashboards, will inevitably push tourism toward greener outcomes. The Vietnamese case suggests otherwise: digital tools coordinate stakeholders, but the direction of coordination is set by the underlying power structure, not by the technology.

The divergence between importance and influence has direct policy implications. Central Government’s dual position, first in AHP importance and strongest in net influence, confirms its role as the system’s primary driver, consistent with Vietnam’s state-led governance tradition. But the fact that Tourism Enterprises, the second most important group, are net receivers of influence suggests that the private sector’s enormous practical role in delivering sustainable tourism is not matched by corresponding directional power. Knowledge and Research Institutions, meanwhile, occupy a paradoxical position: lowest in perceived importance, yet net influencers of the system. This suggests that expert knowledge quietly shapes governance outcomes even when institutions themselves are undervalued in formal policy discourse.

Local Government’s net-influencing position is another notable finding. In Vietnam’s governance system, provincial and municipal authorities implement tourism policy on the ground, mediating between national directives and local realities. Their classification as net influencers confirms that this mediating role carries real directional power, not merely administrative weight. By contrast, Local Communities and Tourists, the groups most directly affected by tourism’s sustainability outcomes, are classified as effect-oriented, meaning they receive more influence than they exert. This asymmetry is precisely the kind of structural imbalance that participatory governance frameworks are designed to correct, and the study’s findings give that correction a concrete target.

The study extends stakeholder salience research, a tradition rooted in Mitchell, Agle, and Wood’s classic 1997 framework, which identified power, legitimacy, and urgency as the attributes that make stakeholders salient. By incorporating a relational, system-level perspective, the Vietnamese study adds a fourth dimension: directional influence within a network of interdependencies. A stakeholder can be salient in the classic sense, powerful and legitimate, yet still be structurally positioned as an effect rather than a cause. This network view is particularly relevant under digital transformation, when booking platforms, social media, and destination management systems create new channels of influence that do not map neatly onto traditional institutional hierarchies.

For Vietnam’s national sustainable tourism governance system, the study provides policy-relevant insights for strengthening institutional coordination, knowledge support, and stakeholder participation. The findings suggest that policymakers should not assume that formal importance translates into directional power, and that governance reforms should target the specific asymmetries the study identifies: elevating the directional role of Tourism Enterprises, sustaining the quiet influence of Knowledge and Research Institutions, and creating channels through which Local Communities and Tourists can shift from effect-oriented to cause-oriented positions. Under digital transformation, when the coordination mechanisms themselves are being rebuilt, these structural corrections are more feasible than ever.

The study’s methodological rigor, validated through a two-round Delphi consensus process and confirmed by institutional research guidelines at Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration, gives its findings credibility. The research involved voluntary expert participation without clinical intervention or identifiable personal data, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. Published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, the study is citable and carries a permanent DOI, ensuring that its findings on the hidden wiring of sustainable tourism governance will be accessible to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide. As digital transformation continues to reshape tourism governance globally, the Vietnamese case offers a template for mapping stakeholder influence that other nations can adapt, revealing not just who matters in sustainability, but who actually moves the system.

Subject of Research: Stakeholder influence mapping in sustainable tourism governance under digital transformation

Article Title: Stakeholder influence in sustainable tourism under digital transformation through an integrated Delphi, AHP and DEMATEL framework

Article References: Nguyen, N. H., & Shyu, W.-H. (2026). Stakeholder influence in sustainable tourism under digital transformation through an integrated Delphi, AHP and DEMATEL framework. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04922-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04922-y

Keywords: sustainable tourism, digital transformation, stakeholder governance, AHP, DEMATEL, Delphi method, Vietnam, tourism policy, stakeholder salience, governance, Stakeholder, influence