Can the home experience in luxury hotels promote pro-environmental behavior among guests?

Abstract

While the home is an important place for individuals to act pro-environmentally, researchers have rarely explored the pro-environmental behavior of hotel customers in terms of their home away from home experiences during their travels. This study uses a combination of qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (questionnaires) methods to explore customer experiences of home spaces in the hotel context and the relationship between people’s experience in hotels and their pro-environmental behavior. The study shows that (1) customers’ experience of home spaces in hotels occurs through three dimensions: the function of home, the emotion of home, and the imagination of home. (2) Both the function of home and the emotion of home exert a significantly positive impact on hotel customers pro-environmental behavior. (3) The imagination of home exerts a significant positive effect on pro-environmental behavior both inside and outside of the hotel. (4) The pro-environmental behavior of customers in their own homes has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the home experience and pro-environmental behavior in the hotel context. By combining the concepts of home spaces and pro-environmental behavior, this study, on the one hand, bridges the research gap between place experience and pro-environmental behavior in the hotel context; on the other hand, the study transcends the limitations engendered by studying pro-environmental behavior in the hotel and home space from a binary perspective.