Reframing Impact: Evolution of Social Impact Assessment Models and Redefinition of Value in Accounting

ABSTRACT

Social impact assessment (SIA) models are central to sustainability accounting, yet their evolution under post‐2021 regulatory transformations (CSRD, EU Taxonomy, ISSB) remains underexplored. A PRISMA‐compliant systematic review of 202 peer‐reviewed articles (2021–2024) from Web of Science and Scopus, with clusters assigned via full‐text content analysis of each article's evaluative logic. Five dominant clusters cover 75% of the corpus: ESG/Disclosure frameworks ( n  = 29), Monetisation/SROI approaches ( n  = 56), Life Cycle Assessment methods ( n  = 23), Scorecard/Audit instruments ( n  = 35) and Logical/Narrative models ( n  = 11). A totla of 59% of articles acknowledge model limitations, 45% adopt hybrid approaches and only 4% cite emerging regulatory frameworks as methodological drivers. SIA innovation outpaces standardisation. Aligning methodological plurality with post‐CSRD regulation—further complicated by the 2025 EU Omnibus revisions—is the field's central challenge. The first systematic mapping of SIA model evolution during the 2021–2024 regulatory juncture, extending prior mapping efforts and identifying four structural tensions not previously documented as a coherent set.