Are Lodging Customers Ready to Go Green? an Examination of Attitudes, Demographics, and Eco-Friendly Intentions

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346 H. Han et al. / International Journal of Hospitality Management 30 (2011) 345–355

customers and identifying the demographic profiles of environ-mentally responsible customers can be advantageous strategies.

Attempts have been made in the marketing and consumer behavior literature to identify how individuals’ ecological attitudes stimulate ecological buying activities (e.g., Kalafatis et al., 1999; Laroche et al., 2001; Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007; Roberts, 1996), and to examine the impact of personal characteristics on eco-friendly consumption (e.g., Banerjee and McKeage, 1994; Laroche et al., 2001; McIntyre et al., 1993; Roberts, 1996). Yet, only a few researchers have examined (1) the possible relationships between lodging customers’ green attitudes in their daily lives and their expressed eco-friendly intentions to visit, to spread word-of-mouth about, and to pay more for a green hotel and (2) gender, age, education, and income differences in forming hotel customers’ environmental friendly intentions. Moreover, little research to date has investigated differences between experienced and inexperi-enced customers in forming eco-friendly intentions in the green hotel industry.

A study to examine associations among hotel customers’ green attitudes, demographics, and eco-friendly intentions not only can help hotel operators to understand their current/potential cus-tomers’ eco-friendly purchasing behaviors, but also can help them to formulate better marketing strategies to reduce intensity of com-petition. The present study attempts to answer the following four principal research questions:

Do personal attitudes (i.e., regarding severity of environmen-tal problems, inconvenience of being environmental friendly, importance of being environmental friendly, and level of responsibility of business corporations) affect eco-friendly intentions to visit, to engage in word-of-mouth behaviors, and to pay more for a green hotel?

If so, which component of attitudes has the greatest impact?

How do hotel customers’ eco-friendly intentions differ across gender, age, education, and household income?

How do such expressed intentions differ based on the existence of previous experience staying at a green hotel?

In the next section, the concept of green hotel, environmen-tally friendly attitudes, and personal characteristics are briefly discussed. Next, the research methodology, including measures of study variables, data collection procedures, and sample charac-teristics, is introduced. The statistical results are then presented followed by the discussion of the managerial implications. Finally, research limitations and some directions for future research are outlined.

2. Literature review

2.1. Becoming more “green”!

The lodging industry may not be the primary one that cre-ates substantial environmental pollution and consumes significant amounts of global resources; however, because of its primary pur-poses of providing comfortable services/supplies (e.g., hot water, food, drinks, linens, towels, lighting, air-conditioning, limousines, swimming pools, etc.), hotels clearly consume gross amounts of water, energy, non-recyclable goods, and natural resources, thus directly or indirectly harming the environment (Bohdanowicz, 2005; Chan et al., 2009; Dief and Font, 2010; Radwan et al., 2010). Conventional hotels, especially, are often associated with issues related to deterioration of the environment. It has been reported that conventional hotels (both large and small hotels) have produced enormous harm to the environment from excessive consumption of non-recyclable goods; water; and energy for heat-

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ing, ventilating, and air-conditioning (e.g., electricity and gas); and have released significant amounts of emissions into the air, water, and soil (APAT, 2002; Bohdanowicz, 2005; Chan, 2005; Radwan et al., 2010).

As more environmental rules/regulations appear and indi-viduals’ environmental awareness increases, consumers are increasingly searching for eco-friendly hotels over conventional hotels. Consequently, many hotels are beginning to implement various innovative methods to increase the “greenness” of their operations (Dief and Font, 2010; Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007; Wolfe and Shanklin, 2001). The term “green” refers to “actions that reduce the impact on the environment, such as eco-purchasing or recycling” (Wolfe and Shanklin, 2001, p. 209). In a simi-lar manner, “green hotel” is defined as an eco-friendly hotel operation that performs/follows various environmentally friendly practices/programs such as saving water/energy, using eco-friendly purchasing policies, and reducing emission/waste disposals to protect the natural environment and reduce operational costs (Green Hotel Association, 2008). Specifically, unlike conventional hotels, green hotel establishments actively follow eco-friendly guidelines and practice environmental management; committing themselves to carrying out environmental improvements, demon-strating such commitment through eco-labels or the green globe logo, and acquiring techniques related to best practices in envi-ronmental management with experts’ help (International Hotels Environmental Initiative, 1993). It is generally agreed that turning a lodging property green not only fulfills environmentally cautious customers’ green needs and assumes the responsibility of perform-ing environmental duties, but also results in substantial cost saving through various environmental benefits (e.g., source/waste reduc-tion, product-life extension, energy/water conservation, recycling, etc.) (Bali and Balfe, 1998; Chan, 2005; Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007; Wolfe and Shanklin, 2001).

In addition, green management has enhanced customer satisfac-tion, market demand (Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007), and corporate image (Mensah, 2004; Penny, 2007). Firms with their green prod-ucts can strengthen their eco-friendly image to attract more customers’ attention. About 67% of Americans claimed that they are likely to pay 5–10% more for green products as they are increasingly concerned with preserving the environment (Coddington, 1990). This movement has also reached the hotel industry. According to Mensah (2004), (90)% of hotel guests would prefer to stay in a hotel that implements green management.