Determinants of climate change disclosure practices of global hotel companies: Application of institutional and stakeholder theories

The purpose of this paper was to develop a theoretical model of climate change disclosure in the hotel industry that builds on stakeholder and institutional theories from the broader sustainability and carbon disclosure literature. A second aim was to develop a climate change disclosure index for the hotel industry and use it to empirically investigate climate change-related disclosure of 183 largest hotel companies in the world. Findings suggest that while several indicators were relatively well disclosed (e.g., within the strategy and policy dimensions), many others were rarely disclosed. The hotel company's listed status, presence of proprietary brands, CDP adoption and GRI adoption were found to be positively related to disclosure likelihood and extent of disclosure, confirming the role of stakeholder and institutional pressures in motivating hotel companies to disclose their climate change-related information, as proposed in the theoretical model. The study contributes to a greater understanding of observed variations in carbon reporting and formulates recommendations for carbon disclosure practices and policy development for the future.