Adoption of Circular Economy and Environmental Certifications: Perceptions of Tourism SMEs

Tourism is one of the most important industries in the world. On the one hand, tourism activities provide a significant boost to many national economies but on the other hand, they severely impact the environment. Tourism SMEs are therefore needed to transform their activities from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE). However, the tourism industry has not yet shown a clear and decisive transition towards CE. There is no or very little academic discussion on why the tourism industry has not yet adopted CE and how tourism SMEs can adopt CE. In this context, we analyzed a sample of 256 tourism SMEs (hotels and accommodations, travel agencies, tour operators, and reservation service activities) based in Cyprus, France, Italy, and Spain. Our survey reveals a ruthless situation regarding the adoption of environmental certifications. There is a very low demand to adopt an environmental certification in the tourism industry. Moreover, the adoption of CE among tourism SMEs is not so high. The main factors that hinder the adoption of green or CE practices are lack of funds, lack of information about potential partners, and lack of skilled personnel. Nonetheless, many tourism SMEs perceive that CE adoption leads to various positive outcomes. Our study provides some suggestions to facilitate the transition towards CE in the tourism industry.

around the same sector (Rodríguez, Florido, & Jacob, 2020). To the best of our knowledge, there is a scarcity of research on CE in the tourism industry despite the fact this industry is predominantly based on a linear economy. Although tourism SMEs may adopt an environmental certification and various green or CE practices to reduce consumption of natural resources, waste generation, and GHG emissions. However, the tourism industry has not yet shown a clear and decisive transition towards CE (Rodríguez et al., 2020). There is no or very little academic discussion on why most tourism SMEs are not adopting CE and in case if they want to adopt CE how they may do so.
In this context, this paper aims to investigate the following questions.
1) How much is the demand for environmental certifications and do tourism SMEs intend to adopt them?
2) What are the drivers and barriers to CE adoption in tourism SMEs?
3) What is the status of CE adoption in tourism SMEs? 4) Which specific green or CE practices do tourism SMEs intend to adopt? 5) What are the outcomes of green or CE practices adoption in tourism SMEs?
The rest of this paper is divided into five sections. Section 2 reviews the literature on sustainable tourism and CE. Section 3 describes the methodology used to investigate the proposed questions. Section 4 presents the statistical results. Section 5 discusses these results and point out their implications. Section 6 concludes the discussion, highlights the limitations, and suggests future research opportunities.

Literature Review
Sustainable tourism is defined as "tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social, and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment, and host communities" (UNWTO, 2005, pp. 11−12). In light of this definition, tourism SMEs are supposed to use resources wisely and conserve natural heritage and biodiversity. Sustainable tourism aims to "satisfy the need of tourists and hosting regions and, at the same time, preserves and improves future opportunities" (UNWTO, 1998). Put differently, sustainable tourism aims to contribute to poverty alleviation and therefore it emphasizes the viability of economic operations that could provide socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders (i.e., stable employment or earning opportunities and social services to host communities) (Girard & Nocca, 2017). To develop such a sustainable industry, tourism SMEs will have to adopt environmental certifications and implement green or CE practices. The current economic system is simply unsustainable. Hence, the concept of CE has been gaining increasing attention not only from scholars but also from policymakers. Lieder and Rashid (2016) pointed out that there are various possibilities for defining CE. There is still no clear or standard definition of CE. Nevertheless, CE can be understood as "an economy that is restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times" (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015, p. 2). Kirchherr, Reike, and Hekkert (2017, pp. 224−225) defined CE as "an economic system that is based on business models which replace the 'end-of-life' concept with reducing, alternatively reusing, recycling and recovering materials in production/distribution and consumption processes, thus operating at the micro-level (products, companies, consumers), meso-level (eco-industrial parks) and macro-level (city, region, nation and be-yond), with the aim to accomplish sustainable development, which implies creating environmental quality, economic prosperity and social equity, to the benefit of current and future generations".
To stimulate the transition towards CE in the EU, the European Commission proposed a Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) in 2015. CEAP mapped out 54 actions as well as some legislative proposals on waste (EC, 2019). However, the EU recycled on average only 30% of all plastic waste by 2018 and thus the European Commission announced a European strategy for plastics and set new recycling targets for plastics at a minimum of 50% by 2025 and 55% by 2030 (Khan, Daddi, Slabbinck, et al., 2020). In the current era, many environmental certifications exist in the world. An SME may adhere to any national or international certification for improving environmental performance and obtaining public recognition (Daddi, De Giacomo, Frey, & Iraldo, 2018). The most widespread and renowned are ISO 14001 and Environmental Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). These certifications are recognized by the EU as part of Sustainable Production and Consumption (SCP) tools that may support the transition towards CE (Marrucci, Daddi, & Iraldo, 2019).
Scholars have recently started to discuss CE in the context of the tourism industry. Girard and Nocca (2017, p. 68) pointed out circular tourism as "a model able to create a virtuous circle producing goals and services without wasting the limited resources of the planet that are raw materials, water and energy". However, the literature on CE in the tourism industry is still in its early infancy (Rodríguez-Antón & Alonso-Almeida, 2019). It is understood that by applying the principles of CE, tourism SMEs can contribute to sustainable tourism. The hotels and accommodations have been already implementing some green practices focused on energy efficiency, water efficiency, and recycling waste (Erdogan & Baris, 2007). Green practices are defined as "a profitable business strategy that adds value to tourism operations that involve environmental conservation initiatives" (Kim, Lee, & Fairhurst, 2017). Green practices provide opportunities for sustainability and long-term recreation activities (Merli, Preziosi, Acampora, Lucchetti, & Ali, 2019), and so by implementing green or CE practices tourism SMEs can reduce their negative impacts on the environment and attract green customers.
In the past two decades, scholars have widely discussed green practices (Ma, Hou, Yin, Xin, & Pan, 2018). They mainly focused on the drivers of green practices. While some scholars investigated the relation between green practices and profitability (Donald, 2009;Yang, Zhang, Jiang, & Sun, 2015), others studied the effect of green practices on customer satisfaction and purchasing intentions in the hospitality industry (Chen & Tung, 2014;Gao & Mattila, 2014;Kassinis & Soteriou, 2015;Kim et al., 2017;Yusof, Jusoff, Ibrahim, & Awang, 2017). Some scholars have studied to what extent tourism development impacts the quality of the environment (Erdogan, 2009;Kasim, 2007). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is a scarcity of research on the adoption of CE from an organizational perspective, particularly in the tourism industry. Moreover, the literature lacks evidence on green practices adoption in travel agencies and tour operators.

Methodology
To investigate the adoption of CE and environmental certifications in the tourism industry, we adopted a quantitative research approach and carried out an online survey among tourism SMEs in Cyprus, France, Italy, and Spain. It is worth noting that tourism contributes to employment and GDP in many countries, especially in the EU, where 5 countries are among the top 10 tourism destinations in the world (Rodríguez et al., 2020). Furthermore, the EU has been taking various initiatives to facilitate CE implementation. The European Commission has recently adopted a new CEAP for a cleaner and more competitive Europe (EC, 2020). Hence, a sample from the above-mentioned EU countries fit perfectly to investigate our proposed questions.
As a first step, we reviewed relevant literature and accordingly developed our survey questionnaire. Next, we asked four academicians and practitioners to review the suitability and contents of our survey questionnaire. In this way, we further improved the quality of our survey questionnaire. Afterward, we translated the survey questionnaire into regional languages (French, Italian, Spanish, and Greek) with the help of project partners. We assumed that questionnaires in regional languages may increase the response rate.
We extracted a list of tourism SMEs through the ORBIS database. Then, we randomly selected a sample of 5000 SMEs. Finally, we invited those SMEs via SurveyMonkey to participate in our study which remained active from January to March 2021. In parallel, we requested our project partners to disseminate the online survey link to SMEs by involving local associations. Although we sent reminder messages in due time, we just got 256 responses at the end of the survey. It is worth mentioning that most of the tourism SMEs that responded to our online survey are micro-enterprises with a low annual income (see Table 1).  Figure 4).

Status
We found successful already re implement  Figure 6 n factors that h ut potential pa s hindrance in s usually do no ntial partners w ot have skilled   Figure  on and use of r euse glass bot ess, the majori of a sustainab lation of smart (see Figure 8).  Vol. 11, No. 1; on green certifications in other industries. Environmental certifications are facing a difficult time due to two main issues which are indeed the two faces of the same coin. On the one side, the raising of the greenwashing phenomenon (i.e., the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company's products are more environmentally sound) is damaging the credibility of the environmental certification (Testa, Boiral, & Iraldo, 2018). Although consumers are interested in green and circular products (Testa, Iovino, & Iraldo, 2020;Yang, 2017) but they are more skeptical of environmental certification reliability (Martín-de Castro, Amores-Salvadó, Navas-López, & Balarezo-Nuñez, 2017). On the other side, the synergies between environmental certifications such as ISO 14001, EMAS, and EU Ecolabel with the CE are not yet fully exploited (Marrucci et al., 2019).
Although these certifications are part of SCP tools, their contribution to CE transition is still scant (Marrucci et al., 2019). In addition to EMAS and EU Ecolabel, even product/organization environmental footprint (PEF/OEF), the EU version of the life cycle assessment (LCA) should take into account by the tourism industry as a useful strategy not only to boost sustainability into their activities but also to communicate to all stakeholders their efforts and commitment towards the environment. The adoption of these tools or other similar tools such as carbon footprint would allow tourism SMEs to achieve a twofold objective. First, they would be able to identify their environmental hotspots i.e., the most impactful activities from an environmental point of view. In this way, they can identify the best solution, to reduce their pressure on the environment, fostering CE facing climate change. Second, they would be able to quantify the environmental savings obtained by the adoption of the green practices using a different unit of measures such as tons of CO2, etc. SMEs from different sectors have already started this path and thus obtaining successes both in terms of both economic savings and environmental performance (Daddi, Nucci, & Iraldo, 2017;Marrucci, Marchi, & Daddi, 2020).
This paper highlights a substantial stillness and aversion towards the adoption of green or CE practices, regardless of the typology of the activities. The main barriers that we identified are the lack of financial resources and the lack of information about potential partners. Thus, despite tourism SMEs recognized a desire to improve their environmental performance, the lack of benefits in terms of turnover, profit growth, and reputation among clients is hampering the adoption of green or CE practices.

Conclusion
This paper contributes to the debate on the adoption of green or CE practices in the tourism industry. Through our online survey in hotels, accommodations, travel agencies, and tour operators, we approached the topic from different points of view considering several managerial and technical issues connected with sustainable tourism development. Even though limited to the sample, we can draft some recommendations based on our study. Our results seem more similar to a qualitative study rather than a quantitative, they can be the basis for a deeper and wider analysis of the whole sector.
As regards the drivers that push tourism SMEs to adopt green practices, the possibility to improve their environmental performance and to increase the quality of the service are the main reasons perceived by the sampled SMEs. The main issues that hindered the widespread of green or CE practices are mainly economic. Indeed, the lack of funds and the lack of return in terms of financial benefits such as increased turnover and profit, are respectively the main barrier and the less perceived benefits for the adoption of green or CE practices. Moreover, respondents indicated energy-efficiency practices such as double-gazed windows and LED lighting equipment as the most suitable green practices for their organizations. Lastly, even though tourism SMEs are declared to have a high level of awareness on environmental issues such as climate change and resource consumption, at the same time their level of knowledge on the strategy to reduce their environmental impact is limited.
Policymakers can contribute to overcoming both the economic and the informative barriers. As regards the lack of funds, economic investments may be financed, and subsidies may be channeled from governmental organizations towards those tourism SMEs which prompt the adoption of green or CE practices. As regards the lack of knowledge, policymakers may foster training courses on sustainable tourism engaging also trade associations and chambers of commerce in order to increase the widespread of these activities. As regards environmental certifications, even on this issue policymakers can have a central and crucial role. To foster their adoption among tourism SMEs, policymakers may prompt some form of regulatory relief, such as extended duration of some permits, reductions in financial guarantees, and tax reductions, to facilitate and support SMEs in the path to the adoption of environmental certification. This strategy may help also to revitalize some certifications whose number of registration are significantly decreasing (Daddi et al., 2018).
quality of the data. However, social desirability bias which is commonly found in surveys could not be ruled out.
In other words, the respondents' perceptions may not coincide with the objective and rational reality. Moreover, this paper is limited to the sample size of 256 SMEs from four EU countries. Therefore, the results of this paper may only be generalized to other countries with caution. One of the main limitations of this paper can also be a future topic to investigate. Indeed, our analysis did not fully consider consumers' awareness, perception, and willingness to buy sustainable accommodation. Future studies may in-depth analyzed these aspects also investigating the relationship between consumers' purchasing choices and environmental certification of tourist accommodations.