Master Thesis Sustainability reporting in the airline industry: a comparative case study analysis of four selected European passenger airlines and their countries of registration on the basis of the airlines’ annual reports and sustainability report from 2018 Student: Laura Vani Kesore (s2015323)
[email protected] Study program: Public Administration M.Sc. First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. René Torenvlied
[email protected] Second Supervisor: Dr. Ringo Ossewaarde
[email protected] Master Thesis 24 August 2020 University of Twente, Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences Drienerlolaan 5 7522 NB Enschede, NL Abstract Sustainability reporting for airlines is becoming more and more important. The driving forces are the external and internal pressures, such as demand from the public and society, from governments, stakeholders and shareholders, as well as from NGOs, activists, and the industry- intern economic competition between the airlines. Within the scope of this research, the main focus was on the research question: How can the variation in the claims of sustainable measures reported in the 2018 annual reports and sustainability reports by four different European airlines be explained from the characteristics of the airlines and of the countries in which the airlines are registered?. The ecosystem for the conducted analyses consists of four airlines from four different countries in the European Union. Seven sustainability parameters were chosen in order to objectively analyze the sustainability reporting of the airlines and of their countries of registrations. The parameters are: (I) alternative fuel, (II) CORSIA, (III) aviation tax, (IV) aircraft age, (V) aircraft design, (VI) Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and (VII) atmosfair Airline Index.