Articles on environmental accounting in tourism enterprises

On the goal and economic consequences of environmental accounting

[ Abstract] The research of environmental accounting has experienced ups and downs for more than 3 years, and has formed two vertical threads and three horizontal discussions under the framework of maximization models guided by the concept of decision usefulness and political and economic analysis. Based on the theoretical framework of social wealth maximization, this paper discusses the objectives of environmental accounting in different levels and stages. At the same time, it points out three main forms of economic consequences in the process of perfecting environmental accounting, and the importance of green economic consequences cycle for environmental accounting construction.

since 195s, with the rapid development of global economy, resources have been rapidly exhausted and environmental pollution has been deteriorating. Especially in the 198s, environmental problems rose from regional issues to global issues, and the "green revolution" gradually penetrated into all fields of society. Some people claim that "accounting is closely related to environmental damage" and that "no company has ever made sustainable profits". It will be quite out of date to still rigidly separate philosophical issues (such as sustainable development, intergenerational equity and environmental protection) from secular businesses that specialize in how to account for these issues. Nowadays, the requirement of accounting responsibility has gone beyond the scope of interpersonal and contractual relations and extended to the level of social relations. Since financial accounting is the cornerstone of reflecting and supervising these relationships, it must play a certain role in the middle (Daniel B. Thornton, 1993).

I. literature review

since the mid-197s, the exploration of environmental accounting has experienced ups and downs for more than 3 years (Parker, 1986). From voluntary disclosure by the company to mandatory reporting by the third party organization; From the appendix of the annual report to various forms of independent reports; From financial report to non-financial report, its content seems to be all-encompassing (Gray, Kouky &; Lavers, 1995), but it is always faced with an embarrassing situation: the attempts of practical circles are not based on many important deterministic characteristics of traditional accounting (Gray, 2); The research in the theoretical circle also failed to form a coherent logical context (Ullmann, 1985).

As Gray and others have repeatedly reiterated later, the four related characteristics that the traditional accounting recognition object should contain: accounting entity, economic events, financial terms and service decision-making users, show considerable deviation in at least three aspects when it comes to environmental accounting issues: First, environmental accounting pays attention to matters from society and environment, rather than simply. Second, environmental accounting widely uses non-standard financial language; Third, information users other than investors in the securities market become the main service targets of environmental accounting statements.

Therefore, when dealing with the relationship between environmental accounting and traditional accounting and defining the caliber of environmental accounting, the theoretical circle basically formed two ideas: First, under the same assumptions and conceptual framework, environmental accounting is regarded as a supplement to traditional accounting, hoping to integrate with many existing mainstream accounting studies, and investors in the securities market are insisted on being the main users of environmental information, while their social effects are limited (Gray et al., 1987; Mathews， 1984， 1993）。 Second, social and environmental accounting reports are regarded as the main form of information exchange between enterprises and society (Preston, 1975, 1981, 1983). However, the broad content and diversified disclosure methods involved in it are often considered by traditional accountants as vague and unreliable (Puxty, 1986, 1991).

according to this thread, it has long been considered that there is a lack of substantive and systematic conclusions (Mathews, 1987, 1993; Mintzberg, 1983) can be roughly summarized under at least two theoretical frameworks: the view of decision-making usefulness with relatively concentrated research scope and the exploration from the perspective of political economy with wider concern.

according to the view of decision usefulness, the ultimate way to test the information usefulness of environmental accounting reports is to pay attention to its influence on investors' decision-making (Dierkes &: Antal, 1985), which constitutes the main research idea now (Gray et al., 1995). Belkaoui(1984) and others studied the importance of all kinds of information fed back by users of traditional accounting statements by means of ordered questionnaire survey, and thought that the disclosure of environmental accounting was of "moderate" importance. At the same time, there are also quite rich achievements in the research on the influence of environmental information on stock price behavior (Aupperle, 1984; Belkaoui， 198； Bowman, 1973), but failed to form a consistent conclusion.

In addition, Gray et al.(1995) initiated the theoretical analysis framework of political economy, and formed two branches: Stakeholder Theory and Legitimacy Theory. He believes that political economy, as a discipline that studies the interaction among various interests, target manipulators and special exchange mechanisms (Zald, 197, p.233), not only focuses on the information behavior of market transactions, but more importantly, it is used to analyze the transaction performance under various non-market contract modes. It is convenient to clarify the mediation, modification and transformation of the relationship between diversified interest groups, and provides an analytical basis for the explanation of environmental accounting by shareholder theory and legitimacy theory.

shareholder theory puts shareholders in the leading position of environmental accounting reports, and holds that management must cater to and meet the needs of shareholders if they want to seek sustainable success (Ullmann, 1985; Roberts， R.W.， 1992）。 The stronger the shareholder's control, the more adjustments the enterprise will make because of the shareholder's intention, which determines the disclosure content and degree of environmental accounting. In this sense, environmental accounting can be regarded as a bargaining dialogue between shareholders and companies (Roberts, R.W., 1992).

The legitimacy theory is different, which holds that management should consider two aspects in company policy making: first, basic environmental measurement; The second is the environmental disclosure policy. Although the goals of the two are the same, both are to seek the legalization of corporate activities (Gray et al, 1995), but the caliber may be different. Therefore, the premise of legitimacy theory arises. When the perceived corporate value of the public is different from the actual corporate value, the management will take a more active way to change and guide the public, and finally make them unified.

Lindblom summed up four strategies for management to seek legitimacy according to the types of differences between the perceived enterprise value and the actual enterprise value: first, when the value difference stems from the poor performance of the company, the company will try to educate and inform the relevant public about the substantial changes in the enterprise behavior that caused the value difference; Second, when the value difference stems from the public's misunderstanding of enterprise behavior, the enterprise only needs to try to change the relevant public's cognition of enterprise behavior without adjusting its own behavior; Third, enterprises also have the motivation to manipulate public cognition, so as to shift the focus and cover up the adverse effects; Fourth, when enterprises think that the relevant public has unrealistic or incorrect expectations for the responsibilities that enterprises should bear, they will tend to correct such expectations.

to sum up, it is not difficult to find that the particularity of environmental accounting has led to the formation of two contexts of its research in general, and two systems of decision-making usefulness and political and economic research have been developed, which are discussed from a vertical perspective. Horizontally, the problem is nothing more than extending from the traditional discussion of maximizing shareholders' wealth to maximizing management wealth and extending to maximizing social wealth.

from beginning to end, the concept of decision usefulness has never given up its insistence on the traditional accounting object, making the theory based on the narrow stockholder's wealth maximization (SWM). The legitimacy theory obviously has the same starting point as the management wealth maximization (MWM) model. Findlay and Whitemore express their premise that management will reflect the most beneficial company performance by manipulating or avoiding measures within the scope of full disclosure. In addition, the social wealth maximization model, which has been widely used in environmental accounting practice, is different from the previous small-scale and deterministic model. It introduces the concept of silent social accounts for a long time, emphasizing that enterprises do not exist in a vacuum, on the contrary, they are part of the social operation (Jaggi &: Zhao， 1996）。 Ramanathan(1976) interpreted this interdependent relationship in a wider scope as a social contract between organizations, society and a wider range of stakeholders. Enterprises operate in the way of maximizing social wealth, and obtain the legal status related to society from it. Social contracts can be assumed to be implicit, and various social laws may make specific contracts clearer. Through these implicit and explicit laws, society has stipulated the rules of accounting responsibility for organizations, and also expanded the scope of corporate shareholders. The state, government and lobbying organizations have played a vital role in the formulation of these laws and the explanation of the rules of the game. Even with the recognition of Bruyn's theory of social investment, a broader interest community, including the natural environment itself and the interests of the next generation, has also been unified. Among them, social investors who play a connecting role believe that the maximization of social and economic values can be realized at the same time.

the shareholder theory has made a useful attempt in this respect. Recognizing the leading role of various shareholder groups in the decision-making of corporate environmental accounting, shareholder theory can be attributed to the category of social wealth maximization model in a sense, but it cannot be avoided that its research object still has limitations, which leads it to be only a part of social wealth maximization model. More importantly, it ignores the differences in environmental accounting requirements of stakeholders at different levels in the discussion, and lacks a phased discussion on the green process. Therefore, under the framework of social wealth maximization model, the author will start with the discussion of environmental accounting objectives, emphasize the nature, hierarchy and stage of environmental accounting objectives, and then lead to the application of economic consequences theory in the field of environmental accounting.

II. Re-understanding of environmental accounting objectives

accounting objective in a general sense refers to the starting point and destination of the operation of an accounting system, which is manifested as the expected purpose, and it depends on the nature of accounting and the objective environment it faces. The most intuitive understanding of the theoretical basis of environmental accounting objectives is nothing more than a process of combining sustainability theory with accounting theory. This combination is not only the coincidence of external forms, but also the connection of internal logic. It not only includes the choice of scope, but also depends on the correspondence of levels; It is not only a problem in space, but also a category in time.

the concept of sustainability originated from forest engineering, and then it has been widely used in other fields. It is generally believed that sustainability means that society cannot use more natural resources than the natural environment may produce (Gray, 1996: 61; Bebbington， 1997）。 Sustainable development is defined as the development that meets the needs of contemporary people without sacrificing the ability of the next generation to meet their own needs. This theory contains a premise that the basic needs of the next generation of poor people in the world should be given priority (Welford &; Couldson, 1993), at the same time, it is necessary to take into account the restrictive role of technical level and social organizations in meeting the environmental capacity of contemporary and next generation. Due to the different degrees of recognition of this premise, sustainability theory can be further divided into two main levels-strong sustainability and weak sustainability. Weak sustainability means that a certain group can exhaust natural resources and degrade the natural environment as long as it can compensate for human losses (skills, knowledge and technology) and artificial capital (buildings, machinery and equipment). From this point of view, natural capital and artificial capital are treated equally. If artificial capital can be replaced, enterprises can rationalize the continuous use of non-renewable resources, so weak sustainability will be more beneficial to individual enterprises. However, there are considerable uncertainties in the possibility of mutual substitution between natural resources and man-made resources. This uncertainty is not only manifested in the technical level, but also in the technology itself. For example, the debate on the non-economic characteristics of many split reactors has never stopped (Common, 1995: 45-46). Therefore, based on non-substitutability, irreversibility, fairness and difference, the protection of non-renewable natural resources with strong sustainability should be paid enough attention (Beder, 1996: 159-6). However, no matter which of the above two viewpoints becomes the theoretical guidance of environmental accounting, the ultimate goal of sustainable development will not change, and it is to build and develop a sustainable society that can exist for countless generations (Meadows, 1992: 25).

thus, the core objective of environmental accounting can be expressed as measuring, publicizing and reporting the change of stakeholders from sustainable development to sustainable society. According to WBCSD, sustainable development includes the active pursuit of economic wealth, environmental quality and social equity (Elkington, 1999: 18). Therefore, enterprises need to explain this process from the perspective of social, economic and ecological "bottom line". As Atkinson said, companies seeking sustainable development should not only pay attention to a single financial bottom line, but also strive to achieve a three-dimensional bottom line. However, it is unavoidable that the process of integrating sustainable development into the government concept is slow, and the process of integrating sustainable development into the company's leadership is often ignored. Although organizations are encouraged to pay attention to the "three-dimensional bottom line"-social impact, economic impact and environmental impact (Elkington, 1998; 1999: 18)-But the financial bottom line still influences the thinking of enterprises, and it is still the main driving force of enterprise action today (Ditz et al., 1995: 6). This forces people to start looking for the right