## 4 Survey Findings
### Difficulties  
After examining drivers and benefits, the technical and economic difficulties encountered by companies and Public Administration in the implementation of EMS are now presented. The major difficulties were encountered in the preparation of the environmental statement, totalizing an average score of 3.83, followed by the economic difficulties, the elaboration of the initial environmental review, and the EMS implementation. Looking at specific items of the environmental statement, the predispositions of environmental performances indicators, the costs for consultancies, and those related to the maintenance of certification appeared as particularly critical (Table 7). Finally, there are not significant differences between public administrations and companies about the financial difficulties encountered during certification. The public administrations however revealed higher difficulties relating to the staff and, in particular, to the lack of time and motivation (Table 8). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Economic Difficulties**} \\ \cline{2-4}  & **Tot.** & **P.A.** & **P.** \\ \hline Average score for difficulties & 3.81 & 3.78 & 3.82 \\ Costs for consultancies & 4.11 & 4.21 & 4.09 \\ Costs for staff training & 3.48 & 3.44 & 3.49 \\ Costs for updating production processes & 3.64 & 3.42 & 3.69 \\ Costs of the verification & 3.99 & 4.01 & 3.99 \\ Costs for obtaining the registration & 3.57 & 3.49 & 3.59 \\ Costs for maintaining the registration & 4.08 & 4.12 & 4.07 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Source: Author’s elaboration on survey database.  
\end{table} 
Table 7: Economic difficulties in EMS implementation. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline  & **Tot** & **P.A.** & **P.** \\ \hline Difficulties related to the environmental statement & 3.83 & 4.23 & 3.75 \\ Difficulties related to staff & 3.43 & 4.24 & 3.28 \\ Lack of staff time & 3.92 & 4.92 & 3.73 \\ Lack of staff motivation & 3.33 & 4.08 & 3.19 \\ Lack of skilled resources & 3.05 & 3.72 & 2.92 \\ Difficulties related to Initial Environmental Review & 3.66 & 3.93 & 3.61 \\ Difficulties regarding the EMS implementation & 3.59 & 4.02 & 3.51 \\ Difficulties related to internal environmental audit & 3.40 & 3.75 & 3.34 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Source: Author’s elaboration on survey database.  
\end{table} 
Table 8: General difficulties related to EMAS registration. Another step is to investigate what might be the possible actions to improve the efficacy of the EMAS regulation. In this section there are no significant differences between public and private sector, that is why the two groups have been analyzed together. Despite the discrepancy between drivers and benefits achieved seems not so important, the majority of the organizations would improve the access of EMAS registered organizations to public incentives and to simplified administrative procedures, by the use of the environmental statement as an official document (Table 4 and Figure 1). Moreover, they ask for a stronger involvement of public authorities on EMAS promotion. Instead, a more extensive use of the logo, the simplification of regulation, and a standardized environmental statement have been considered as less important factors (Figure 1). Finally, we discussed how drivers, benefits, and difficulties affect the organizations' decision to renew EMAS certification. Figure 2 shows that 80.74% of the sample intended to maintain certification and only 5.10% showed the will to drop out of it. Figure 1: Organizations recommendations for EMAS improvement. Source: Author’s elaboration on survey database. Figure 2: Certification propensity for renewal. Source: Author’s elaboration on survey database. Table 9 shows that the smaller are the dimensions of the organization, the higher the dropout rate is. Respectively, 20.28% of Small and 22.50% of Micro organizations do not intend to renew. Conversely, over 95.00% of Large and 90.91% of Medium will maintain EMAS.