Co‐Creation for Sustainable Tourism: A Conceptual Framework and Pathways to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Co‐creation plays an increasingly important role in shaping how tourists, communities, and businesses work together to support sustainable tourism. Despite its growing relevance, existing studies approach the topic from separate angles such as tourist experience, digital innovation, or destination governance, making it difficult to form a coherent understanding. To address this gap, this study provides a systematic bibliometric review of 417 peer‐reviewed publications indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, offering a comprehensive review of how co‐creation has evolved conceptually and empirically within sustainable tourism. Using VOSviewer and CiteSpace, the analysis identifies six clusters: experience design, cultural mediation, branding, smart tourism, collaborative governance, and sustainable practices, demonstrating a conceptual shift from service‐dominant logic to multidimensional frameworks. Building on these insights, the paper introduces the co‐creation sustainability framework (CCSF), which positions co‐creation as a transformative paradigm for sustainable tourism. This framework integrates three interrelated dimensions: participatory governance as ethical infrastructure, digital‐human hybridization as the experiential frontier, and sustainability carry‐over effects beyond the visit. Each dimension is explicitly connected to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): inclusive governance (SDGs 11 and 16), responsible innovation (SDG 9), and long‐term behavioral transformation (SDGs 12 and 13). The study contributes theoretically by consolidating fragmented scholarship into a unified paradigm and practically by guiding policymakers, managers, and destination organizations in leveraging co‐creation as a driver of SDG‐oriented tourism futures.