Field research method was used to collect the data for the analysis and a
questionnaire was designed. The questionnaire has three main parts. Questions
regarding the general characteristics of the hotel are in the first part.
The second part consists of the questions designed to get information about the
environmental reporting applications of the hotels. Questions about the hotels
preferences on measuring and reporting environmental costs were presented to the
respondents with the following options: preparing the costs in question as a separate
report, preparing as part of the annual report, preparing within the financial
statements in a separate account or indicating at the financial statement footnotes,
and not reporting separately.
The questions regarding the impact of the stakeholders on hotels’ environmental
accounting practices were asked in the final part. The following groups were defined
as the stakeholders: shareholders, creditors, management, employees and trade
unions, customers, suppliers, communities, competitors and the society. In this part,
managers were asked to present their view on the impact of the each stakeholder on
environmental accounting practices using a five-point Likert scale.
The contact information of the managers of 1367 4 and 5 star hotels operating in
United Kingdom was obtained from www.visitbritain.com website. Questionnaire form
was sent to hotel managers via e-mail. If a reply was not obtained within a week, a
remainder was sent. If after a week of the remainder there was still no response, the
manager was contacted by phone and a phone interview was performed. This
procedure provided 116 answered questionnaires and 104 of these were usable for
the analysis.