Sustainability Reporting in the Hospitality Industry: Findings from a Structural Equation Modeling Approach to Environmental Disclosure

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Useful for scholars studying determinants of environmental disclosure, especially in developing country contexts.

🏢実務担当者:Hospitality firms can identify key drivers (employee size, CSR, financial resources) to enhance their disclosure practices.

🏛政策担当者:Regulators in similar contexts can consider capacity-building and standardization to improve environmental disclosure.

Growing attention to environmental accountability has brought corporate disclosure to the center of accounting and sustainability reporting, especially in service sectors such as hospitality. However, there is still limited and scattered evidence on what drives environmental disclosure at the firm level in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ghana. This study examines the factors that influence environmental disclosure among hospitality firms, with a focus on how organizational and financial characteristics shape reporting behavior. The analysis uses data from 192 hotels and catering establishments across Ghana’s 10 administrative regions, drawing on firm-level indicators such as employee size, financial capacity, CSR engagement, and asset structure. Using an ex post facto design within a non-experimental, cross-sectional framework, the study applies structural equation modeling with estimation conducted in Jamovi to assess the relationships among variables. The employee size shows a strong positive association with environmental disclosure (β ≈ 1.01), highlighting the role of organizational capacity in supporting reporting practices. Corporate social responsibility engagement also exhibits a significant positive association with disclosure practices (β = 0.74, p < 0.001), suggesting that firms with established CSR commitments are more inclined toward transparency. Financial strength, reflected in total income and long-term assets, shows a clear positive influence on environmental disclosure (β = 0.97, p < 0.001). In simple terms, firms with more resources are better positioned to support structured and consistent reporting. Organizational maturity also has a positive effect, though a weaker one (β = 0.0966, p < 0.08). This suggests that experience matters, but younger firms can sometimes move faster, especially when they are responding to competitive pressure or new regulatory expectations. These results call for the need for stronger institutional support, clearer reporting standards, and targeted capacity-building efforts to improve environmental disclosure in the hospitality sector. They also leave room for further work on how regulation functions in practice and how disclosure patterns vary across different sectors.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.61093/fmir.10(1).142-175.2026first seen 2026-05-05 23:26:01