Destination green equity and its moderating role of travel satisfaction

Abstract

Being sustainable reflects a need to appreciate tourist demands in line with the needs of the local community, industry, and environment. In other words, there should be measures to assess a place’s sustainable practices from the eye of the beholders. This study works to develop the concept of destination green equity, which is defined as tourist perception of a destination’s environmental initiatives, and explores its moderating role in the relationship between product and destination satisfaction. Drawing on the goal setting/striving theoretical stream of work, we propose a moderation model of green equity for the relationship between tourism product and destination satisfaction. Based on a sample of over 400 tourists, results reveal that a place’s green equity moderates the effect of food/transportation satisfaction in that the effect is more acute for the high green equity group. This study contributes to the literature by showcasing how environmental initiatives such as recycling and reducing energy consumption could ultimately elevate tourist satisfaction with a destination’s food and transportation offerings. The four-item green equity measure offers scholars and practitioners with a fairly simple and yet comprehensive way to assess a destination’s ecological achievement from the viewpoint of tourists. It also opens an avenue for assessing a place’s greening efforts and the conditioning impacts of such efforts on tourists.