Abstract:
Green accounting practices are essential for every organization. While many studies
have investigated sustainability reporting, CSR activities, environmental accounting
based on the environmental sensitive sectors there is a dearth of research based on the
finance sector in Sri Lanka. As banking entities are non-sensitive the objective of this
study is to measure the level of Green Accounting Practices among the Banking
Entities in Sri Lanka. GRI standards under the economic, social and environmental
dimensions were used to measure the level of green accounting practices. Further
level of green accounting practices is different from company to company and there
may be some factors which are affecting to this variation. Hence this study analyze
the selected variables which are firm age, firm size, leverage and net income to
identiff the determinants of green accounting practices level among the banking
entities in Sri Lanka. Based on the availability of information the selected samples
size is 12 banks which are licensed under the Central Bank of Sri Lanka included 3
state banks. Disclosure score checklist is used to collect the qualitative data which
used to measure the level of green accounting practices from the annual reports for
five year period from 2015-2019.
Panel data analysis was used to regression analysis, descriptive analysis, correlations
analysis, multiple regression analysis. According to the descriptive analysis, revealed
that there is some level of green accounting practices among the banking entities over
five year period which showed average of 44 o/o. Based on the result of correlation
analysis, level of green accounting practices showed a significant rveak positive
relationship with leverage and it showed significant strong positive relationship with
the firm size, strong positive relationship with net income. The level of green
accounting practices showed insignificant weak negative relationship with the firm
age. As per the regression result there are significant positive effects of firm size,
leverage and net income on green accounting practices while there is insignificant
negative effect of firm age on green accounting practices among the banking entities.
Based on the results, researcher recommends maintaining the very great level green
accounting practices among the banking entities by considering factors that affecting
to the level of green accounting practices. Therefore engaged with more on green
accounting practices will be help to get advantages in the short term or long term.
