Motivations for ISO 14001 in the hotel industry

The moral, ethical, social, and political arguments for taking action on environmental issues are becoming more persuasive and more widely accepted. The hotel industry is also taking various initiatives for the sake of the environment, for economic reasons, or to build a positive image. Some hotels have gone one step further and adopted the internationally-recognized ISO 14001 Environmental Management Standard. By applying the predictive model developed by Quazi et al. (Int. J. Manage. Sci., 29(6) (2001) 525), this study investigates and identifies a number of variables to predict the motivation of hotels in adopting the ISO 14000 standards. Of the 1097 questionnaires mailed to hotels in the Hong Kong SAR, Macau, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in China, 164 were returned. Using LISREL analysis, Quazi et al.'s (Int. J. Manage. Sci., 29(6) (2001) 525) model was found to not have a good fit with the sample data obtained from the hotel industry. An exploratory factor analysis was thereafter employed to identify interpretable orthogonal factors, resulting in the identification and interpretation of eight factors. By using a stepwise discriminant analysis, a predictive discriminant function was developed. Only two out of the eight variables were included in the model for the hotel industry. They were (1) corporate governance and (2) legislation. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.