Accounting for Sustainability in the Malaysian Tourism Industry: Theory, Methods and Application

Accounting for sustainability represents the process of identifying, measuring and communicating information of all three elements – economics, social and environment in a report. Even though this study considers all three aspects, the main focus is on the environmental aspect. Therefore, it falls under the environmental accounting domain.

Environmental accounting, under a larger scope, would be seen as covering all segment levels, starting from the national level to the smallest, which is the firm level. According to U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (1995), under the context of national accounting, environmental accounting regards a nation or region’s consumption, extent, quality, and value of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources, which are shown in statistics.

Meanwhile, under the financial accounting aspect, it refers to the preparation of financial reports that contain environmental information for external audiences that are governed by the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Finally, in the view of management accounting, environmental accounting is concerned with environmental costs that affect capital investment decisions, costing determinations, process/product design decisions and performance evaluations.

Therefore, this study explores all three environmental accounting areas and seeks to integrate them to produce a tool in the form of sustainability financial statements for a designated tourism location.

Rosmini Ismail's research is sponsored by the Malaysian Government. Further information about this project can be found here.

Contact Rosmini Ismail for more details.