Tourists’ environmental behavior and intention to stay at green hotels in the social media context

Abstract

This study focuses on analyzing the impact of tourists’ environmental behavior on tourists’ intentions to stay at green hotels. Specifically, the study examines the inter-relationship between the inter-personal factors – including connectedness to nature, environmental concern, and environmental activities – and tourists’ intentions to stay in green hotels. The study also explores the context factor of hedonic value when using social media as a moderator of these impacts. Survey data were collected from 600 tourists in Vietnam and structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed to test the research model. The results show that customers' environmental concern and environmental activities both play mediating role in the relationship between connectedness to nature and intention to stay at green hotels. In addition, hedonic value when using social media moderates the relationship between environmental concern and environmental activities on intention to stay at green hotels, but not the direct relationship between connectedness to nature and intention to stay at green hotels. These findings have important implications for policies on promoting green hotel behaviors.