Measuring Green Banking Practices: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Abstract

Abstract
In recent years, both academics and practitioners are paying more attention to green banking concept due to its significant influence on environment management in banking context. In Sri Lanka, banks are launching green banking initiatives in recent years. Apparently, there are lacunas in empirical studies undertaken in Sri Lankan context regarding green banking practices and how to measure the level of intensity of green banking. As the green banking has become an emerging concept, both researchers and practitioners have called for a set of reliable and valid instrument for measuring green banking concept. The objectives of this paper are to explore the green banking practices in Sri Lanka and to develop an instrument to measure the green banking concept/practices. In order to achieve the first objective, data were collected from the secondary sources, mainly from the last three years annual reports of the selected banks in Sri Lanka and content analysis was applied. Regarding second objective, an instrument was developed to measure green banking practices and tested among the 155 bank staff of selected bank branches. In connection with the first objective, this study has identified and explored 98 green banking practices among the four private sector Commercial Banks in Sri Lanka. Regarding the second objective, a 16 items instrument with four key dimensions were developed to measure green banking. It is a reliable and valid instrument in measuring green banking practices from the perspective of Sri Lanka.
Keywords: Green Banking Practice, Sri Lanka, Scale Development, Reliability, Validity