Purpose Solely focusing on economic development and financial issues have led to insufficient attention to society and the environment, which has increased the injustice in this area. Accounting can aid to compensate for this harm and improve environmental issues. That is why social and environmental accounting (SEA) is rapidly growing and evolving. However, it has not been fully implemented yet. May be one cause for this issue is the lack of identifying the factors that influence SEA implementation in all dimensions. The purpose of this paper seeks to identify these factors. Design/methodology/approach Based on the existing theoretical foundations and expert opinions, the factors influencing SEA implementation were divided into seven categories, namely, accounting requirements, environmental justice, environmental responsibility, legal requirements, organizational factors, pollution control and business issues. Interpretative structural modeling and MICMAC techniques were applied to examine the relationships between these categories and model design. Findings The results revealed that the legal requirement dimension is one of the effective factors and which has been identified as the cause. However, the rest of the dimensions are influenced by legal requirements. As a result, as the legal requirements are considered as the foundation of establishing the model, this factor must be seriously considered for the effective implementation of the SEA. Social implications As the environment is not a unique environment and it has given the pivotal role of the environment in the sustainable development of communities, this leads to an increased demand for improved environmental quality. As a result, public expectations of the accounting profession to increase SEA have increased. In this paper, using the opinions of 12 environmental accounting professionals, a model for Implementation of SEA was designed to avoid social and environmental costs and damages. Originality/value Considering that identified factors are of great importance in the implementation of SEA, it seems that using a comprehensive framework that includes all the factors, can have a great impact on how to improve and enhance SEA. This study is the first to provide comprehensive model for SEA implementation.

PurposeMany developed countries have been using environmental taxes in their economic systems for many years. These taxes have a great impact on reducing the environmental damages of companies and individuals in society. But many developing countries have not used this tool effectively yet, and some countries face barriers to the effective implementation of environmental taxes that make it difficult and unsuccessful. To increase the effectiveness of the implementation of environmental taxes, governments must prioritize barriers and solutions to overcome its barriers. The identified knowledge gap of the pre-literature review is that an overview of the identification which completely considers all barriers and solutions of environmental taxes implementation does not exist. In response to this knowledge gap, this study aims to identify and prioritize the barriers and solutions of environmental taxes implementation.Design/methodology/approachRanking the barriers and solutions is a complicated multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem that requires consideration of multiple feasible alternatives and conflicting tangible and intangible criteria. This study addresses the prioritization of solutions of Environmental Taxes implementation by proposing hybrid MCDM methods based on the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy-AHP) and the Fuzzy Technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (Fuzzy-TOPSIS) under fuzzy environment. Fuzzy AHP is used to determine the weight of each barrier using a pairwise comparison, and fuzzy TOPSIS is used to finalize the ranking of solutions for more effective implementation of environmental taxes.FindingsThe results showed that environmental tax reform (ETR) (S3) has the highest value among the solutions for more effective implementation of environmental taxes. The result of the proposed model is validated by performing sensitivity analysis.Research limitations/implicationsThis study could foster research on the discussion of these barriers and precise ways of implementing solutions to pay more attention to environmental taxes.Practical implicationsRatings of solutions can be a guide and help governments to improve the implementation of environmental taxes or even develop this policy by being aware of the ranking of barriers and solutions.Social implicationsThis paper creates a new perspective on the effective implementation of environmental taxes, which is closely related to improving environmental performance and increasing social welfare through improving the tax system.Originality/valueFor the first time, this study comprehensively identifies barriers and solutions for more effective implementation of environmental taxes and ranks them using two MCDM techniques.

Purpose Increasing environmental pollution and destruction have damaged sustainability in polluting societies and organizations. For this reason, various environmental management programs have recently been developed by governments and the environmental protection agencies (EPAs) to control and reduce environmental pollution. One of these programs is environmental audit (EA), which has not been fully implemented yet in developing countries and it has many disadvantages. It seems that one of the reasons for the lack of perfect implementation of EA in these countries is the lack of adequate review of the factors affecting its implementation. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors affecting EA implementation and then analysis of causal relationships between them. Design/methodology/approach Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique was used to identify causal relationships of factors affecting EA implementation. Based on the literature review and interviewing nine experts in EA, 17 factors were identified to influence EA implementation. Six experts were selected for the evaluation using snowball sampling method. Using the DEMATEL approach, a cause and effect relationship diagram was generated through which the effect of factors was analyzed. Findings Seventeen factors were categorized in terms of cause and effect, and the interrelationships of factors were also analyzed. “Reducing environmental impacts and improving environmental performance,” “obtaining environmental management system certificates” and “contributing to the environmental goals of investment projects” are the most prominent factors on the basis of their prominent score. Research limitations/implications Analysis in the research is highly dependent on expert judgments and opinions may be biased. However, the initial matrix obtained from the experts is hindered by the ambiguity about some relationships. But this can be improved by using fuzzy and gray set theories. The factors used for the analysis may not be comprehensive and other researchers may find other factors. Practical implications Identifying the factors affecting EA implementation and analyzing causal relationships between them can be a guide and help governments to improve the implementation of EA or even develop this policy by being aware of the effect of the factors analyzed. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no comprehensive study of factors affecting EA implementation has been undertaken; this study is the first to identify these factors and analyze them using DEMATEL. Therefore, it is suggested that governments and EPAs in the policies focus on the significant factors.