Towards a Conceptual Design for Environmental Cost Identification and Allocation

Neungruthai Nickie Petcharat and Joseph M. Mula

The motivation for undertaking this study was driven by the current practice of activity based costing (ABC), which has identified and allocated costs of environmental factors to overheads. This has resulted in cost accounting information inaccuracies when providing to support environment internal decisions and addressing stakeholders and public concerns. The results of the study indicate that companies are intending to change to new management accounting practices while looking for ways to improve cost identification and measurement of environmental factors. Thus, this study designs a conceptual model for a sustainability management accounting system (SMAS) utilizing environmental management accounting (EMA) for cost identification and measurement while expanding on activity based costing (ABC) application to help in the cost analysis and allocation of environmental impacts. A SMAS provides companies’ accountants with a way to create more accurate accounting data for management decision and environmental reporting initiatives.

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.21102/jbpr.2014.07.91.03