The use and effectiveness of environmental management accounting

ABSTRACT

This study examines the extent of use of both physical and monetary aspects of environmental management accounting (EMA) and the influence of the comprehensiveness of the environmental management system (EMS), size, and top management support, on the use of EMA. The study also investigates the impact of EMA use on environmental performance. Data were collected from 208 Australian organisations across different industries using a mail survey questionnaire. The results indicate a moderate extent of physical EMA use, and a low extent of monetary EMA (MEMA) use. The comprehensiveness of the EMS and top management support were found to influence the use of EMA. In addition, organisations using EMA to a greater extent, in particular MEMA, were found to experience higher levels of environmental performance. The findings provide support for the promotion of the dissemination of EMA in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental management accounting (EMA)
• physical environmental management accounting (PEMA)
• monetary environmental management accounting (MEMA)
• environmental performance
• environmental management
• management accounting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The common fit measures and their recommended threshold values are: norm chi-square < 5 (Marsh & Hocevar 1985); GFI and CFI > 0.90 (López-Gamero et al. 2010); and RMSEA < 0.10 (Henri 2006).

2. We acknowledge that the nature of top management support and the way it is interpreted may vary based on the size of an organisation, proxied by the number of employees.

3. The inclusion of this variable did not affect the other reported findings.