Bridging competitiveness and sustainability in tourism: a multistage network DEA approach aligned with the SDGs

Enhancing tourism competitiveness while addressing environmental constraints and post-pandemic recovery challenges has become a critical issue for sustainable development. This study employs a multistage network data envelopment analysis (NDEA) to assess the sustainable tourism effectiveness of 117 countries across five dimensions: transportation infrastructure, information technology, service activity, tangible benefits, and sustainability governance over three interconnected developmental stages. To capture post-pandemic changes, this study uses TTCI 2019 as the pre-pandemic baseline and TTDI 2021 and 2024 as recovery-period benchmarks. The results reveal substantial continent-specific effectiveness gaps, with North America, Europe, and Oceania showing stronger performance in transportation, digital infrastructure, and service effectiveness, whereas Africa and South America require further improvement in transforming tourism resources into tangible economic benefits. By integrating the tangible benefit and sustainability governance dimensions, the NDEA framework provides a diagnostic tool for identifying stage-specific areas for improvement. The findings offer practical implications for enhancing destination competitiveness, promoting responsible resource use, and supporting SDG 8 and SDG 12 in the post-pandemic tourism context.