The Green Accommodation Management Practices: The Role of Environmentally Responsible Tourist Markets in Understanding Tourists’ Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Abstract

The green accommodation sectors are increasingly committed to implementing environmental management practices while enhancing guests’ pro-environmental behaviour. However, it is not easy to change tourists’ behaviour as there are many factors influencing tourists’ participation in green management actions. This paper argues that a combination of multiple factors such as visitor characteristics or previous environmental experience needs to be examined to determine how these factors are differently associated with the type of pro-environmental behaviour. In particular, this study also investigates how environmentally responsible tourist markets can engage differently in different types of pro-environmental behaviour. Visitors staying at the green accommodation in Kangaroo Island, South Australia, were studied using self-administered questionnaires. The findings of this study confirmed the significant role of environmentally responsible travel experience as a strong predictor of two types of pro-environmental behaviour (e.g., energy-saving and recycling vs. eco-product consumption behaviour) and its moderating effects on the relationship between visitor characteristics and pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs). Furthermore, this environmental-responsibility-based segmentation approach provides green-oriented accommodation sectors with some managerial implications for improving green accommodation practices that can be operated on different principles for two different targeted markets based on their environmental responsibility. This study recommends that more in-depth investigations of other barriers or facilitators of pro-environmental behaviour are necessary to fully address this issue and to ultimately influence tourists’ responsible support for environmental management practices implemented by the green accommodation sector.