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Keywords
Environmental management, Hospitality services. Owner-managers, Green marketing, Scotland
Abstract
This paper reports on the preliminary findings of an exploratory study on environmental decision making in the context of largely small serviced accommodation establishments. It focuses on the motivations of owner-managers for becoming environmentally involved and their reasons for joining an environmental accreditation scheme. The study was conducted in Scotland using face-to-face in-depth interviews with members of the Green Tourism Business Scheme, an environmental accreditation scheme for tourism businesses. Initial analysis suggests that involvement in environmental activities may be driven by economic as well as ethical considerations. The results point to the role played by personal values and beliefs in small firms' decision making and the need to gain a greater understanding of the complexity of motives that drive the small hospitality business owner.
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Introduction
The issue of sustainability has been widely addressed in the business literature. However, the reasons behind the adoption of sustainable practices remain largely unexplored, particularly in the context of small hospitality firms. This paper discusses the preliminary findings of a wider study on environmental decision making in the context of owner-managed lodging operations. Addressed here are the owner-managers' motivations for adopting an environmental profile and for joining the Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS), an environmental accreditation scheme for tourism businesses in Scotland. A brief examination of the theoretical framework begins the paper, followed by an outline of the methodology and the presentation of the findings.
The hospitality industry and the environment
There have been growing efforts to engage the greening of hospitality practice, with initiatives such as the International Hotels Environmental Initiative (IHEI) acting as a catalyst for action. These have largely worked to the exclusion of small independent concerns, which are limited by resources and tend to respond more to legislative requirements than to voluntary codes of practice (Wallis and Woodward, 1997, p. 96). Hence the notion that environmentally active establishments act in comparative isolation, rather than as part of an industry-wide co-ordinated initiative (Knowles et al., 1999, p. 263). The traditionally high levels of fragmentation partly explain this reality in...