Determinants of environmental certification in Portuguese hotel companies

There are many responsible business and investment initiatives in the field of environmental performance, and among these, certification is a targeted mechanism. In this work, we intend to study the determinants of environmental certification of hotel companies, analysing the Portuguese case. The empirical study considers hotel companies established in Portugal that may operate one or more hotel units. The information retrieved from the Portuguese National Tourism Registry and Iberian Balance Sheet Analysis System database was coded, and a database was built in the SAS software. Variable and data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics, variable correlations, and the Tobit regression model. The results indicate that affiliation to a brand, hotel classification and hotel size are factors that explain environmental certification, but the return on sales was not statistically significant in this study. These results are important to understanding the determinants of environmental certification in hotel companies since, as a topic of research, it has had little attention prior to the study for the Portuguese case, thus reinforcing the importance of this research. The study also reveals the restricted sample of hotel companies with environmental certification in Portugal, which did not allow computing other study variables that would improve the empirical work.