Customers’ Behavioral Intentions in Relation to Sustainable Green Marketing Activities in Hotels

Abstract

Green marketing in the hotel industry is no longer just an option. As awareness of environmental issues has increased, more consumers have began to prefer eco-friendly products, the so-called “green option” in relation to their behavioral intentions despite higher cost. Previous literatures focused on the relationship from green marketing to value, belief, and norm separately. However, this research applied green marketing to VBN simultaneously. The purpose of the study is to clarify whether hotels’ green marketing activities have a significant effect on the actual behavioral intentions and decision making. The eleven 5-star hotels located in Seoul, South Korea were selected for the survey. The survey was via online due to COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) from August 15, 2020 to August 30, 2020. A total of 318 responses were used for analysis. This study conducted an empirical analysis using SPSS 22 and Amos 22. The result shows that hotels’ green marketing has a positive impact via the VBN theory at large, though the relationships from recycling to norm and pro-environmental programs to value are less significant. In other words, variables such as recycling and energy saving as they pertain to direct behavioral intentions influence hotel customers’ value and belief in psychological perspectives and indirect variables such as pro-environmental programs also influence customer’s belief and norm but not as significantly for value. The results of this study are expected to help us understand which attributes affect behavioral intentions, especially in the hotel industry which is conducting green marketing.