The Impact of Sustainability Practices on the Going Concern of the Travel and Tourism Industry: Evidence from Developed and Developing Countries

Abstract

Sustainability refers to the evaluation and communication of quantitative and qualitative information of the sustainability performance of a business in a balanced way regarding the environment and the society in which it operates. Companies are responsible for stakeholders’ justification and disclosure expenses consisting of dedicated sustainability practices, thereby strengthening the company’s financial performance. However, due to the deficiency of consistent information and a lack of transparency in corporate reporting, tourism industries fail to realize the association between sustainability practices and financial performance. Moreover, there is a lack of literature that deals with the impact of macro-level sustainability factors on firms’ financial performances. Furthermore, linking the going concern concept and sustainable practices with financial performance through the Z-score model is not frequently done in the corporate world. Hence, this paper investigated the impact of macro-level sustainability practices on the going concern ability in developed and developing countries’ tourism industries for the 2016–2020 period, including a sample size of 138 listed companies, through panel data analysis. This study fills the empirical gap by adopting the Altman Z-score to analyze the financial performance related to sustainability practices in terms of environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The empirical results reveal that macro-level sustainability practices significantly impact the going concern from developed and developing countries’ perspectives.