The Determinants of Environmental Accounting Practices: Proposal of a Theoretical Model

Abstract

Currently, the environmental accounting is spreading more and more widely among businesses. It is a new form of accounting practice that integrates the principles of sustainable development and social responsibility into corporate management systems. Institutional or social pressures, major environmental problems (pollution, environmental disasters, etc.) and the widening of corporate responsibility towards society explain in large part the emergence of this practice (Renauld 2014, Marquet - Pondeville 2003). While the beginnings of these practices date back to the 1970s in developed countries, notably the United States and Switzerland (Renauld 2014, Christophe 1995, Ricahrd 2013), they are still very recent in Morocco.

This article has two associated objectives: Firstly, it is a question of presenting the environmental concept and its integration in the economic sphere, particularly within a company from an accounting point of view via environmental accounting. Then, the second objective of this article will be to discuss the determinants and/or the explanatory factors of the establishment of environmental accounting practices from a theoretical point of view, while mobilizing the neo-institutional theory, the theory of stakeholders, contingency theory...in order to propose an explanatory model.