Price‐premium effects of business and community green certifications: The case of the Costa Rican hotel industry

Abstract

This study examines whether community-level green certification strengthens or weakens firm-level environmental certification performance's effect on Costa Rican hotel room prices. Identifying how different types of environmental (green) certifications complement or substitute one another in their influence on economic benefits is essential for understanding how self-regulations programs can promote win-win green business strategies that contribute to sustainable development. Relying on a propensity score-matching approach, we analyze participation in two voluntary environmental certification programs for the entire population of Costa Rican hotels and beach communities between 2001 and 2008. Our findings suggest that for hotels with low to medium environmental certification performance, community-level green certification acts as a substitute weakening the positive effect of hotel environmental certification performance on price premiums. Alternatively, for hotels with superior environmental certification performance, green community certification acts as a complement strengthening the positive effect of hotel environmental certification performance on price premiums.

Societal awareness of environmental certifications in Costa Rica

“…They can be related to the level of involvement in environmental certifications, and the array of sustainability practices carried out by companies (Rivera and Roeschmann, 2019). Exploring the causes and consequences of this dimension opens up interesting lines of research.…”

“…This can be especially relevant for some sectors in Costa Rica, such as tourism (see e.g. Rivera, 2002;Rivera and Roeschmann, 2019) and agroindustry (see e.g. Birkenberg and Birner, 2018).…”