Promoting Sustainability through EMS Application: A Survey Examining the Critical Factors about EMAS Registration in Italian Organizations  
[PERSON]  
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[PERSON]  
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[PERSON]  
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importance among external stakeholders, and firms need to integrate environmental management into their processes [6]. If previously this pressure was determined by public institutions with regulations, nowadays there is an increasing pressure from different stakeholders categories, including citizens, consumers, NGOs, and employees [7; 8; 9].  
To meet stakeholders' sustainability requirements, firms are forced to introduce environment related actions [7; 10]. The Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) represents a way through which firms can internalize environmental issues [4], showing a proactive attitude toward sustainability [11].  
For the first time, in 1992, with the Fifth Environmental Action Programme (SEAP), the European Community (EC) remarked the importance of introducing voluntary instruments for firms to encourage a proactive approach to reduce their impact on the environment. Consequently, in 1993 the first version of the Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) was launched, as an instrument of firms' self-regulation in addition to compulsory regulations [12]. In 2009, the last version of the scheme (EMAS III, Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009) was published [13; 14]. Three years later, the first version of the EMAS Regulation, the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) introduced its 14001 standard, which gave all firms worldwide the opportunity to implement a third party certified EMS [15]. The ISO 14001 standard was launched in 1996, and reviewed in 2004 and 2015 [16]. Both EMAS and ISO 14001 helps firms to implement a formal management system with an environmental policy, program, and practices [17]. Although the two systems have the same general objective of reducing organizations' environmental impact, they differ in some aspects [18]. [PERSON] _et al._ (2014) found out differences in firms' environmental performances. Results suggest that ISO 14001 implementation lead to a stronger improvement of environmental performances in the short run, determining that the maturity of ISO 14001 is not linked with greater environmental performances. Conversely, EMAS improvements are smaller in the short term, but wider in the long term. Authors attribute this result to the fact that firms before implementing EMAS are already highly credible and concerned of their environmental impact [19]. According to [PERSON], [PERSON] (2012), motivation on the implementation of the EMS are very different referring to EMAS or ISO 14001. While ISO 14001 is often a response to external pressure, EMAS is significantly coupled with internal drivers [20].  
By the end of 2014, over 3300 organizations were registered in Europe according to the EMAS scheme, with Italy accounting for about 35% of the total. Given the importance of the instrument in Italy, a survey on the entire population of EMAS organizations in Italy has been conducted. The aim of the work is to analyze how Italian organizations perceive the EMAS registrations, regarding the effectiveness of reducing their environmental impact and other economic and social aspect of organizations. In the first part of the questionnaire, motivations for the registration have been assessed, then the main difficulties in implementing the scheme, and finally the level of both environmental and economic benefits.  
In this paper, we initially present the findings of previous surveys conducted on the EMAS scheme, in order to make possible a confrontation and validation of results. In the second part, the research method is presented and the findings are discussed.