Eco-innovation and management in time of crisis: a comparative analysis of environmental good practices and labour productivity in the spanish hotel industry (2008-2012)

Abstract

The economic crisis in recent years has significantly affected the Spanish hospitality industry. Some factors that affect labor productivity and therefore business performance in this sector may have affected the productivity in a different way when the economic crisis in Spain became deeper. One such factor is the eco-innovation. In previous works, the authors of this paper have used a variable that holds a set of good environmental practices to analyze the impact of the introduction of eco-innovation measures on labor productivity. The variable "good environmental practice" is an indicator of environmental management and has been introduced in a widely used production function. The main objective of the present work is to compare the impact of that variable on labor productivity into two different times (2008 and 2012) to verify the changes that have occurred as a result of the economic crisis. This analysis was performed for a sample of 173 hotels in Andalusia in 2008 and 181 in 2012.