The effects of environmental non-governmental organizations on environmental policies of chain hotels in Turkey

In this study, the effects of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGO) on environmental policies of chain hotels were examined. The population of the research comprises a total of 692 hotels operating in Turkey as the subsidiaries of 141 hotel chains. The data were collected via survey and interview techniques. After data collection process, 156 usable questionnaires were obtained from hotels and 40 in-depth interviews were held with senior hotel managers. The ordinal logistic regression model was employed to the survey data. The findings indicate that the hotel chains? environmental policy building process and environmental management activities are affected by actions and discourses of environmental non-governmental organizations. On the other hand, it was found that the possibility of developing environmental behaviour and attitudes of the hotels having ISO 14001 certificate or environmental award is higher than the hotels which are not owing ISO 14001 certificate or environmental award. While type of the hotel (city versus resort hotel) affects environmental policy building process, type of the chain (national versus international) affects environmental behaviour and attitudes of hotel chains. Another finding of the research shows that an increase in number of rooms, beds and staffs also increase the possibility of environmental policy building process and environmental behaviour and attitudes rises. There is no significant relationship between ownership of the hotel, having written environmental policy or not, number of hotels in the chain, operating period of hotels and environmental policy building process and environmental behaviour and attitudes.