Nanoporous ZnO powders with high surface-to-mass ratios (SMR) between 15 and 70 m² g^-1 are synthesized, structurally characterized, and studied by time-resolved photoluminescence (PL). A strong dependence of the recombination dynamics and spectral width on SMR is observed at T = 10 K, and pronounced disorder-induced effects are found in the temperature dependence. Both the thermally induced shift of the PL maximum and the spectrally integrated PL intensity are interpreted by appropriate theoretical models. This consistent quantitative analysis of the experimental data yields a characteristic energy of 15 meV for the disorder scale in the nanoporous ZnO sample with an intermediate SMR.