Understanding how consumers view green hotels: how a hotel's green image can influence behavioural intentions

TLDR

Green management is increasingly viewed as a strategic tool to enhance a hotel’s competitive advantage amid growing public concern for environmental issues. The study investigates how to build a green hotel’s image and branding using cognitive, affective, and overall image concepts, and how these images influence intentions to revisit, recommend, and pay a premium. The authors surveyed 416 hotel users to examine how a green hotel’s image affects behavioural intentions such as revisit, recommendation, and premium willingness. Results show that cognitive components—especially quality attributes—enhance affective and overall images, which in turn boost behavioural intentions, with selfish altruism and wellbeing feelings also playing strong roles, and quality attributes proving more influential than value attributes.

Abstract

As the public is increasingly concerned about environmental issues, green management is rapidly becoming a strategic tool that can enhance a hotel's competitive advantage. This study explores how to develop the image and branding of a green hotel using the concepts of cognitive, affective and overall images. The study, based on a survey of 416 hotel users, also investigates how a green hotel image can affect behavioural intentions (i.e. intention to revisit, intention to offer positive recommendations to others and willingness to pay a premium). The findings confirm that cognitive image components (namely value and quality attributes) can exert a positive influence on a green hotel's affective and overall images. The affective image is also found to positively affect a green hotel's overall image. A green hotel's overall image, in turn, can contribute to more favourable behavioural intentions. Quality attributes were found to be more powerful than value attributes. The importance of the concept of selfish altruism and obtaining a feeling of wellbeing from a purchase were shown to be very strong. A range of theoretical and practical implications are discussed.