Page 95 - Sustaining Accommodation SMES
P. 95

6.2 Quantitative Insights

            Slovenia, Italy, Spain, and Greece, assessed through Chi-square tests of in-
            dependence. Interpreted through the Triple Bottom Line perspective and
            Stern’s theory of environmentally significant behaviour, the results reveal
            both shared adoption patterns and clearly differentiated country specific
            sustainability profiles. Across all four countries, adoption is most consis-
            tent for practices associated with basic environmental management at the
            operational level. Practices such as waste handling infrastructure show
            no statistically significant differences between Slovenia, Italy, Spain, and
            Greece, indicating a shared baseline of environmentally oriented opera-
            tional behaviour across the Mediterranean accommodation sector. These
            practices correspond to forms of environmentally significant behaviour
            that are strongly shaped by contextual factors such as infrastructure avail-
            ability, regulatory requirements, and routine operational norms.
              In contrast, statistically significant cross-country differences emerge
            for practices that require higher levels of organisational structuring and
            strategic commitment. Greece stands out as a context in which prac-
            tices such as sustainability strategies or action plans, dedicated sustain-
            ability teams or coordinators, and environmental labels or certificates
            are adopted by a comparatively large share of accommodation providers.
            This suggests that environmentally significant behaviour in Greece more
            frequently extends beyond operational actions and is embedded in for-
            mal organisational arrangements.
              Spain occupies an intermediate position. While basic environmental
            practices are widely adopted, the adoption of more formalised practices
            related to planning, certification, and structured responsibility alloca-
            tion is less consistent than in Greece. This pattern indicates that envi-
            ronmentally significant behaviour in Spain is partially institutionalised,
            combining operational environmental actions with emerging but un-
            even organisational integration. Italy and Slovenia display more selective
            adoption patterns. In both contexts, operational environmental prac-
            tices are commonly adopted, but practices that require formal planning,
            dedicated sustainability roles, or external certification show significantly
            lower adoption rates. From the perspective of environmentally significant
            behaviour, this suggests that sustainability actions in Italy and Slovenia
            are more often driven by routine operational considerations and contex-
            tual constraints, rather than by sustained organisational commitment or
            formalised sustainability governance.
              Within the Triple Bottom Line framework, these country differences
            are particularly visible for practices that span environmental and social


                                                                 95
   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100