“I Study Accounting Because I Have To”: An Exploratory Study of Hospitality Students’ Attitudes Toward Accounting Education

ABSTRACT

This article investigates an important misconception about studying accounting among undergraduate hospitality students. Despite the importance of accounting knowledge demanded by the hospitality industry, there is empirical evidence highlighting the poor performance of hospitality students in accounting-based units. These reasons can be attitude related, such as repetitive boring content, or capability related, such as poor numeric skills. To address this research gap, this study adopted the theory of planned behavior as the theoretical framework to elicit hospitality students’ perceptions of studying accounting for a nonaccounting degree. A total of 62 hospitality students participated in the interviews. Results suggest that although students’ attitudes fluctuated throughout their accounting study, positive attitudes were more common than negative attitudes. Perceived difficulties such as the complexity and challenges of complex accounting information can be reduced if the unit is perceived to be interesting and fun and the learning environment involves supportive faculty and classmates.

KEYWORDS:

• Accounting education
• hospitality education
• hospitality students
• theory of planned behavior