Increasing Awareness of the Future Leaders on Environmental Accounting

Abstract

Improvements in technology, population growth, greenhouse effects, global warming and as a result of these effects, degradation of the ecological system day by day have led people to take preventive measures for environment. One of the preventive measures is educating individuals on social responsibility and at this point, universities have important tasks. Leaders of the future with the awareness of social responsibility will push their future institutions and managers to have an important and sensitive role in the means of environmental responsibility. Also, accounting has focused on the measurement and reporting of environmental issues as a part of "social responsibility" principle. In this study, bachelor degree business administration students who were enrolled in accounting classes before are selected as the sample. Difference in students’ awareness of and concerns for environmental issues is statistically measured by the primer including environmental accounting and environmental management accounting with the case studies on reporting, best practices. According to the results of this research, the primer prepared for this study has a significant effect on the change of awareness. To raise a generation that is well aware of environmental issues, environmental accounting should be valued more in the curriculum. Increasing environmental accounting literature with cases and best practices is of utmost importance.
Keywords: Environmental Accounting, Social Responsibility, Sustainability.