Environment-related Activities Research Articles

Impacts of Environmental Knowledge, Motives, and Behavior on Ecotourism

Trip cost indirectly reflects the perceived value (PV) related to a tourist destination, which can be influenced by knowledge, motivation, and behavior. This research investigated the relationship between PV and pro-environmental behavior (PEB). Moreover, the influence of environmental knowledge and motives on PEB was ascertained. Hikkaduwa National Park, Sri Lanka, was considered as a case study, and 235 visitors were interviewed for data collection. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was developed based on the proposed hypotheses. The average individual cost of traveling of local tourists is USD 4.7, which reflects the PV. The results revealed that motivation directly and indirectly impacts PV, and PEB positively influences PV. Environmental knowledge does not positively influence either PEB or PV. Motivating individuals to participate in environment-related activities is important for encouraging PEB and positively impacting value perception. As PEB influences PV in ecotourism areas, eco-friendly individuals will visit these areas as they value them more. Anthropogenic impacts are minimized if the visitors are environmentally friendly. Accordingly, this study highlights the desirability of promoting ecotourism and PEB for the environmental sustainability of marine habitats. The management of ecotourism destinations can develop strategies to use PEB to ensure the long-term survival of these areas.

Students’ Awareness Regarding Environment Protection in Campus Life: Evidence from Romania

Climate awareness is a major topic of concern, and the Green Deal in Europe attempts to turn states, communities, and local actors towards more environmentally conscious action to reduce, by 2030, the net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55%. Universities voluntarily adhered to the 2030 Agenda, displaying a wide variety of approaches to respond to sustainability goals and calls for greening. The purpose of the present study is to establish the students’ readiness for action as sustainability promoters, starting with their awareness of environmental issues. Upon focusing on the perceptions of students from the oldest university in western Romania gathered via an online questionnaire in 2023, the research showed that 95.6% of respondents consider climate issues as important or very important to them, even though less than 50% of the sample evaluate their own knowledge of environmental protection as good or very good. The results show that of the parameters that differentiate student awareness and actions, gender and place of residence (on campus/off campus) play a significant role, helping shape tailored strategies and projects to capitalize on students’ predispositions to engage (or not) in environment-related activities.

재무제표의 비교가능성과 기업의 ESG 활동

[Purpose] The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the comparability of financial statements and a company's ESG activities. With the growing social interest in corporate ESG activities, which has been positively associated with their economic effects, companies with higher comparability may show more active ESG activities under greater external monitoring. If external information users of companies with high comparability of financial statements can easily obtain relevant company information, they can collect and interpret more information efficiently and effectively, leading to more active external monitoring of corporate activities.
 [Methodology] Regression analysis was conducted using the ESG ratings evaluated by the Korea Institute of Corporate Governance and Sustainability (KCGS) from 2012 to 2020 and the comparability variables of financial statements. Additionally, the relationship between comparability and ESG activities was analyzed by dividing the sample depending on the levels of information asymmetry, and by alternative variable of the comparability and ESG activity to ensure the robustness of the research results.
 [Findings] The results show that companies with higher comparability have more active ESG activities, particularly in governance and environmental－related activities, which showed a significant positive relationship. Moreover, the positive relationship between the comparability and ESG activities was more evident in companies with greater information asymmetry, indicating that comparability improves the information environment surrounding companies and strengthens the monitoring function of ESG activities.
 [Implications] The study contributes to academic knowledge by demonstrating that the attribute of accounting information, such as the comparability of financial statements, affects a company’s ESG activities.

Employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility activities: the case of family firms

PurposeCorporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming a standard for family firms as the challenges facing organizations today are pervasive. In this context, employees’ perceptions of CSR are a novel research field. This study aims to address human components of business operations as it aims to understand how employees perceive CSR activities and determine their role for employees’ identification and commitment in family firms.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a mixed-method design combining samples of employees of family firms in a quantitative (N = 168) and qualitative phase (N = 18).FindingsIn summary, the findings show that employee-directed CSR is most effective to influence employees’ identification and commitment. Detailed mediation analyses further support the path from community-oriented CSR toward identification-commitment and performance. Findings from employee interviews show that identification is particularly pronounced in CSR perceptions and that mechanisms of identification occur across three interfaces: the firm, the firm in the region and the firm in a globalized world impacting commitment and performance.Originality/valueFamily firms engage in various CSR activities. The authors show that existing efforts can be empirically supported but that there is room for improving the strategic selection and engagement of activities. In a nutshell, the findings emphasize the importance of human components for businesses. In this context, understanding how CSR activities build identification and affect organizational commitment has important implications for family firms boosting CSR activities. In particular, the contribution emphasizes family firms’ need to stay engaged in community-directed CSR while increasing awareness for environment-related activities and diversifying employee-related activities to enable identification.

Toward Autonomous Farming—A Novel Scheme Based on Learning to Prediction and Optimization for Smart Greenhouse Environment Control

The greenhouse industry has received great attention and experienced tremendous growth in the recent past across the globe. However, energy consumption and labor cost in greenhouses account for more than 50% of the cost of greenhouse production. This demands an Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart solution for automation of greenhouse environment-related activities to ensure maintenance of the desired climate inside the greenhouse to maximize plant production with optimal resource utilization. To this end, several models are proposed in the literature that is based on a selected artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm which is once trained and then deployed. The drawback of such systems is that the trained models are fixed (locked) and, therefore, unable to adapt to dynamically changing conditions, which results in performance degradation. Second, the existing studies on the subject matter are focused on the individual key component (i.e., prediction, optimization, and control). In this article, a novel scheme is presented based on the integration of the key components, and the performance of prediction and optimization components is further enhanced through the exploitation of artificial neural network (ANN)-based learning modules to support autonomous greenhouse environment monitoring and control. For experimental analysis, the greenhouse environment is emulated through the mathematical formulation of essential greenhouse processes, considering the impact of actuators’ operations and external weather conditions. Real environmental data collected for Jeju Island, South Korea is used for model validation and result analysis. Proposed learning-based optimization scheme results are compared with two other schemes, i.e., baseline scheme and optimization scheme. Comparative analysis of the results shows that the proposed model maintains the desired indoor environment for maximizing plant production with reduced energy consumption, i.e., it achieves 61.97% reduced energy consumption than the baseline scheme, 11.73% better than the optimization scheme without learning modules. Furthermore, the proposed model achieves 67.96% and 12.56% reduction in cost when compared to the baseline scheme and optimization scheme without learning modules, respectively.

Corporate Social Responsibility: The Impact of Employees’ Perceptions on Organizational Citizenship Behavior through Organizational Identification

The impact of the employees’ perceptions of CSR activities on the employee-organization relationship has been little explored in the literature. This study aims to analyze the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) perceptions (Environment-related CSR; Employee-related CSR, Customer-related CSR) on organizational citizenship behavior through the mediating role of the organizational identification of employees in the hotel sector. A questionnaire was applied to a sample of 214 frontline employees who work in four- and five-star hotels. Using Model 4 of the PROCESS macro, a mediation model was designed to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that there is a mediation model that uses the effect of organizational identification in the relationship between perceptions of CSR and organizational citizenship behavior. This study concludes that an increase in identification with the organization based on environmental-related activities, employee-related activities, or customer-related activities impact on OCB. The results of this study represent contributions to the literature in the CSR field, as well as to the case of human resources managers who wish to enhance organizational citizenship behavior and identification among hotel staff.

A gradient-based deep neural network model for simulating multiphase flow in porous media

Simulation of multiphase flow in porous media is crucial for the effective management of subsurface energy and environment-related activities. The numerical simulators used for modeling such processes rely on spatial and temporal discretization of the governing mass and energy balance partial-differential equations (PDEs) into algebraic systems via finite-difference/volume/element methods. These simulators usually require dedicated software development and maintenance, and suffer low efficiency from a runtime and memory standpoint for problems with multi-scale heterogeneity, coupled-physics processes or fluids with complex phase behavior. Therefore, developing cost-effective, data-driven models can become a practical choice, and in this work, we choose deep learning approaches as they can handle high dimensional data and accurately predict state variables with strong nonlinearity. In this paper, we describe a gradient-based deep neural network (GDNN) constrained by the physics related to multiphase flow in porous media. We tackle the nonlinearity of flow in porous media induced by rock heterogeneity, fluid properties, and fluid-rock interactions by decomposing the nonlinear PDEs into a dictionary of elementary differential operators. We use a combination of operators to handle rock spatial heterogeneity and fluid flow by advection. Since the augmented differential operators are inherently related to the physics of fluid flow, we treat them as first principles prior knowledge to regularize the GDNN training. We use the example of pressure management at geologic CO2 storage sites, where CO2 is injected in saline aquifers and brine is produced, and apply GDNN to construct a predictive model that is trained with physics-based simulation data and emulates the physics process. We demonstrate that GDNN can effectively predict the nonlinear patterns of subsurface responses, including the temporal and spatial evolution of the pressure and CO2 saturation plumes. We also successfully extend the GDNN to convolutional neural network (CNN), namely gradient-based CNN (GCNN), and validate its capability to improve the prediction accuracy. GDNN has great potential to tackle challenging problems that are governed by highly nonlinear physics and enable the development of data-driven models with higher fidelity.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in the construction industry of Sri Lanka

Construction could be considered an industry that provides a major contribution to the economy, society, and the environment. However, it is often criticised due to its unethical and substandard practices. Thus, effective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices could be utilised to minimise the adverse effects in the industry and lead to sustainability of the industry. This study focused on identifying various CSR practices prevailing in the Sri Lankan construction industry. A qualitative research approach, with twenty-three semi structured interviews, on a purposive sample, was used to gather data. Grounded theory: transcribing, coding, categorizing, was used for data analysis with five expert group interviews conducted to validate the gathered data. Findings revealed that the activities related to, three categories of CSR activities performing among construction business organisations i.e. business process-related CSR, business environment-related CSR, and philanthropic activities. Despite the industry's focus on philanthropy, it still has the capability to promote the concept of CSR through its various business process-related and business environment-related activities. As the main implication of this research, industry practitioners and stakeholders can apply the identified CSR categories and CSR activities within their core business operations to contribute to sustainable development.

Environmental Accounting Disclosure and Financial Performance of Listed Multinational Firms in Nigeria

The study investigated environmental accounting disclosure and financial performance of listed multinational companies in Nigeria. This study was conducted by firstly assessing the level of compliance, and then exploring the effect of environmental disclosure on financial performance with a focus on multinational companies in the face of continued environmental abuse witnessed in the Nigerian business space owing to the non-availability of sustainability reporting legal framework. The study used secondary data obtained from the published annual reports of the companies from 2011 to 2020. Data collected (Environmental disclosure index, return on asset, earnings per share), were analyzed using descriptive statistics and panel regression analysis. It was discovered that in assessing level of compliance, out of the three sectors assessed, oil and gas was the least compliant. Also, results showed that environmental accounting disclosure had a significant and positive effect on earnings per share (EAPS) but a negative and insignificant effect on return on asset (RETA). The study, therefore, concluded that the extent of responsiveness of companies to environmental accounting disclosure influences how the company is valued.The study, therefore, recommended that multinational companies and other Nigerian firms, should make effort to disclose their environmental-related activities even though it is not required by law, as it has shown evidence of its influence on earnings on shares of companies.

COVID-19 Pandemic: A Motive for Pro-Environmental Behaviors (Pebs) in the Egyptian Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Academics have been curious about what motivates pro-environmental behaviour. However, a few research studies have been conducted to analyse and comprehend the pro-environmental behaviour of those in charge of service and production (employees). The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted this topic, emphasising the significance of employees’ pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) in promoting and maintaining business sustainability. Therefore, this study contributes to the body of knowledge by investigating employees’ PEBs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person and online surveys were used to reach the staff of hotels and travel agencies in Egypt’s most popular tourist areas. The quantitative data were analysed with SPSS 25. The results revealed that employees of the tourism and hospitality industry are exceptionally engaged in PEBs in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, the findings indicate that the structure of tourism and hospitality employees’ PEB comprises six factors: operation activities, habits, organisation rules, health, energy-saving, and environment-related activities. However, their behaviour must be guided and improved in three key areas (personal health, organisational rules, and operation activities). According to this study, employees may follow certain practices without understanding their justification or significance. In practice, the study presents recommendations that might increase the industry’s resistance to challenges in improving the pro-environmental behaviour of industry employees.

IFIs undertake financing when their environmental and social quality criteria are met

The main content of this article is to describe “climate finance” and “green finance” in detail, as implemented by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and their pertinent environmental and social project quality criteria. The approach of this article is to perceive and understand environment-related activities of international financial institutions (IFIs) as part of a societal learning process, and consequently to describe their “environmental and social project quality criteria” as an expression of such ongoing societal learning processes. What can our readership, related to global finance, profit from such a comparison? Against the expectation of many, IFIs already implemented efficient rules for redirecting global funds to climate and environmental projects — and have thus performed a successful “act of societal learning”. The “environmental and social project quality criteria” have played a crucial role in convincing economic and administrative actors (i. e., learners in our context) to behave in a climatecompatible manner. Thus, the lesson can be drawn from the domain of “societal learning” to the domain of “individual learning” that clear and transparent criteria sets are decisive for a rule-based societal transformation. This article shows that a criteriabased selection process provides the best results for long-term societal interest; in this case climate protection.

New system of higher engineering education in Germany

Introduction. The paper registers some significant changes that higher mining education has undergone over the past decades, including the ones that occurred in Germany. Mineral production on the Eurasian continent has been decreasing gradually and resulted in the declining demand for mining specialists. It is in German that the tendency was the most pronounced. Reduced number of students and the subsequent reduction in the number of mining and geological departments concerned all leading centers of mining education. Relevance. Higher educational institutions in Germany are looking for a way out of the crisis reorienting their teaching and scientific activity to the allied sciences, in particular oil and gas production, underground engineering structures construction, production and processing of unconventional natural resources, subsea production, environment-related activities, and spoil disposal. Colleges also train specialists for other countries and international mining corporations. Methods of research. The paper provides examples and analysis of new curricula in the universities of Freiberg, Aachen, Clausthal, etc. These mining schools have accumulated considerable experience in reforming and developing mining education. Current state. The mining field of vocational training in German colleges has acquired an integrated name which can be translated as the “technology of mineral raw materials”. Traditional mining specialisms are being combined and consolidated. New methodological approaches are being extensively introduced. These steps are to improve the appeal of the mining education for the youth and arouse employers interest in the specialists of a new specialism.

Taiwanese Buddhism and Environmentalism

Abstract Buddhism is often said to be an environment-friendly religion, but this thesis is rarely investigated. In this paper, we employ a mixed-method approach to examine this thesis in the case of Taiwan. We use data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey (tscs) and apply qualitative content analysis to examine practices among major Taiwanese Buddhist organizations. The findings suggest: (1) Buddhists in Taiwan engage significantly more in environment-friendly behavior than other religious members, and (2) members of different Buddhist organizations display similar levels of engagement in environment-related behavior. However, (3) Buddhist organizations engage very differently in environment-related activities. (4) Buddhist organizations engage more in nonpolitical environmental activities than they do in politically sensitive ones, and (5) among the four major Buddhist organizations, female-led Buddhist organizations show a higher level of environment-related practices than male-led organizations.

An investigation into the remuneration–CSR nexus and if it can be affected by board gender diversity

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between remuneration packages [chief executive officer (CEO) and director] and independent corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (marketplace, environment, community, workplace and money spent on CSR) of 588 Malaysian listed firms during 2006–2017. Further, the study explored the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the remuneration-CSR nexus.Design/methodology/approachThe dynamic estimator; namely, the system generalized method of moments given by Arellano and Bover (1995) has been used on the data set to control dynamic endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity problems.FindingsFindings indicate a weak relationship between remuneration and CSR where prior CEO remuneration negatively influences marketplace activities, environment-related activities and workplace practices. However, directors’ remuneration leaves no effect on socially responsible activities. Moreover, board gender diversity negatively moderates the CEO remuneration-CSR relationship and an insignificant moderating effect has been observed for directors’ remuneration-CSR nexus.Practical implicationsThis study is particularly significant for regulatory bodies of Malaysia e.g. Securities Commission Malaysia, Bursa Malaysia, policymakers, investors and managers. For academia, this study fetches support from agency theory and overinvestment hypothesis to explain the relationships.Originality/valueThis paper is novel in providing empirical evidence on the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relationship between remuneration and independent CSR activities for the first time. Moreover, this study has sourced several theoretical and practical implications. Then, the study uses a dynamic estimator that caters to the problems of endogeneity, simultaneity and heterogeneity.

Anti-crisis mechanisms for solving the problems of agriculture development in the modern context

The article concentrates on the problems of the formation and development of agriculture in Russia in the event of a crisis caused by the pandemic, and provides brief characteristics of the core business activities in this direction. The features of the agrarian crisis, as one of the forms of economic recession, which are provoked by economic crises, and are also associated with business cycle fluctuations, are revealed. Furthermore, the main threats to the agricultural sector, the level of development of Russian agriculture at the present time are considered. A SWOT analysis of the environment-related activities of agricultural producers is presented, and the prospects for the development of the agro-industrial complex in a shifting trajectory from subsidized financing and debt restructuring of the agricultural sector to high technologies are considered. The authors state that modern society is developing in a cyclical spiral, in search of new models and new approaches to the managerial economics in agricultural production. The need for strategic anti-crisis intervention in the agro-industrial complex is determined by predicted patterns inherent in critical phases in the evolution of the system.

Do environmental and financial performances affect environmental disclosures? Evidence from listed companies in Indonesia

The number of companies in Indonesia that have participated in environmental-related activities continues to grow. Some of these companies have also engaged and implemented an assessment program called Program for Pollution Control, Evaluation, and Rating (PROPER). This assessment program was initially launched by the Indonesian Ministry of Environment in 1995 to measure and rate the environmental performance of companies in Indonesia. They have also administered an environmental management system as part of their environmental protection initiatives. However, the level of environmental disclosure by these companies is still low. This may occur due to the current situation in which the companies are not obliged to incorporate environmental disclosures on their annual reports. For those companies that disclose their environmental performance, there is also no apparent reason on why they have done that. This research aims to examine the effect of environmental performance, company financial performance, and company characteristics on environmental disclosure. The population used in this research comprised of all registered non-financial companies in the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2014–2016. The sample was selected using a purposive sampling method to obtain 36 sample companies and analyzed through multiple regression analysis. Results show that the environmental performance variable, which is described by PROPER ratings and environmental management systems, and company size variable, both affect the extent of environmental disclosures. However, the financial performance variable, which is described by companies’ profitability and leverage, and the number of board commissioners variable, both do not significantly affect the extent of environmental disclosures.

Assessment of Automobile Transport-related Pollution in Cities at Low Ambient Air Temperatures

This article covers a number of issues related to identification of environmental pollution with combustion gas emissions from vehicle engines in urban areas at low ambient air temperatures. Ambient air quality in urban living areas depends on elimination of adverse impact of traffic-related pollution on environmental well-being of citizens. This article gives an overview of dependences of the number of vehicles warmed up at night time and in the morning at ambient air temperatures below zero. Massive emissions subject to ambient air temperature for open air car parking have been determined. It has been established that most of car owners violate the Russian Federation legislation in terms of failure to comply with its bylaw, namely the Traffic Regulations. Based on the results of the conducted study, certain measures have been provided to identify law violators and to strengthen control of compliance with the Traffic Regulations. While discussing the study results a suggestion has been formulated that inevitability of punishment will contribute to raising effectiveness of environmental pollution control in large cities. Cultivation of environmental policy and management system should also be kept in line with up-to-date international needs and requirements and enable effectiveness and efficiency of environmental-related activities in the state.

Stock Index Performance of SRIKEHATI 2014: Case Study of ISAT and MEDC

This study analyzes the returns volatility of ISAT and MEDC in context of green investment. These two stocks are member of SRIKEHATI index. SRIKEHATI is an index containing stocks that concern on environment, social and governance. The period of analysis cover 2009-2014 the focus of the study is on three measures of price earning ratio (PER) and fundamental performance indicator, environment activities disclosure in sustainability report was done. Results show that return volatility of ISAT affects return index of SRIKEHATI significantly, but not for MEDC. ISAT has experienced decreasing profit that continued to a loss, inconsistent reporting environment activities in the sustainability report. MEDC has experienced decreasing of profit but did not lead into a loss. MEDC is also consistent in reporting environment-related activities through publishing sustainability reports.
 Keywords: green finance; green investment; SRI-KEHATI index; ISAT; MEDC

The influence of institutional isomorphism and organisational factors on environmental management accounting practices of listed Nigerian and South African firms

The rising profile of environmental issues, most of which relates to continuous consumption of materials, energy and water by companies, and the continuous accumulation of environmental-related costs, necessitates the need for environmental management accounting (EMA). EMA is regarded as an extension of the conventional management accounting, which is adopted for the purpose of tracking and treatment of costs, earnings and savings incurred in relation to companies’ environmental-related activities. This paper determines the level of EMA practices among selected Nigerian and South African firms, and the influence of institutional and organisational factors on the level of practice in each country. Utilising a quantitative research approach, the study used a structured questionnaire to obtain data from 22 listed firms from each country. The data were analysed using an independent sample t-test and a multiple regression estimation technique. Results demonstrate that the level of EMA practices in South African firms is higher than those in Nigerian firms. Institutional isomorphism, through coercive pressure, was found to be the main determinant of EMA practice among South African firms, while EMA practice among Nigerian firms is on account of individual organisational factors. The evidence from the study supports both the institutional and contingency theories as they apply to EMA practices. Therefore, the results indicate that coercive pressure may be necessary to stimulate EMA practice in Nigerian firms given that similar conditions exist in sampled firms in South Africa. Efforts to strengthen normative and mimetic forces can also improve the level of EMA practice in both countries.

An examination of different perspectives on philanthropic corporate social responsibility

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to identify different perspectives on philanthropic corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by using the mixed-method approach and Q methodology. In addition, this study examines why people consider the revealed perspectives to be important factors.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors used a structured sampling of 30 CSR-related statements (a Q sample) and had participants rank-order the statements from “most important” (+4) to “most unimportant” (−4).FindingsThe results, from the factor analysis and correlation using the Q method software program PQMETHOD, revealed two distinctive perspectives. The first group emphasized the importance of supporting environmental-related activities. The second group ranked supporting arts-related activities as the most important factor of philanthropic CSR activities.Research limitations/implicationsThe goal of Q methodology is not the generalizability of the results but to identify the different views that exist regarding a topic, even minority ones. The findings are discussed in terms of practical implications for how this framework can be used to understand the subjective papers of different types of stakeholders.Originality/valueThis study identifies the different perspectives that exist regarding philanthropic CSR activities by using Q methodology, which is a good alternative to other research methods that provides a unique way of uncovering subjectivity from the participants’ point of view.