The effect of environmental costs on production costs and competitiveness: A research in the green star hotels

In the tourism industry, especially in accommodation establishments, the environment is an important factor. The environment is the most important fund of accommodation establishments and the continuity of these establishments depends on the environment. The rapid decrease in natural resources in the face of unlimited needs and the increase of environmental awareness forced these establishments to be sensitive to the environment. Furthermore, customers' preference for environmentally sensitive establishments encouraged them to perform practices to protect the environment. These practices of the establishments to protect the environment require some costs to be incurred. The costs incurred to prevent or reduce environmental damage constitute the environmental costs. The environmental practices and the environmental costs are likely to have an impact on the establishments. Most of the studies have been conducted to determine the effect of these practices on competitiveness. In this study, it was tried to determine the effect of environmental practices and environmental costs of establishments on production costs and competitiveness. This study is important in terms of determining the impact of environmental practices and costs on the establishments. For this purpose, a survey was asked to the manager or the environment officer of 356 Green Star facilities and structural equation modeling with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes by using SPSS and LISREL package program were applied to the obtained data. As a result of the analysis performed, it was determined that the costs related to the reduction of environmental damage and the use of resources had a positive effect on reducing production costs, while the damage costs resulting from environmental damage had a negative effect on reducing production costs. However, it has been concluded that the reduction and utilization costs have a positive effect on competitiveness whereas the damage costs have a negative effect on competitiveness.