Environmental Accounting in Albania: Challenges, Perceptions, and Factors Influencing Implementation

Environmental accounting adoption remains limited in transitional economies, particularly where formal institutions fail to enforce sustainability mandates. We examine this phenomenon in Albania—an EU candidate country with regulatory requirements but no implementation infrastructure. Drawing on institutional-void theory and resource-based perspectives, we test whether adoption mechanisms diverge when external enforcement is weak. Survey data from 151 Albanian non-financial companies, analyzed using ordinal logistic regression, show that firm size predicts adoption, whereas sector, ownership, and market orientation do not. Critically, individual-level factors—managerial environmental knowledge and pro-environmental values—significantly predict adoption, while external institutional factors exert negligible influence. Analysis of Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive readiness reveals similar patterns: internal organizational capacities support preparation, whereas external support remains insufficient. These findings demonstrate how institutional voids shape sustainability accounting and provide empirical evidence from an understudied Balkan context.