Environmental Sustainability In The Thai Hotel Industry

Abstract

Nowadays, the growing concern of environmental sustainability does not only influence consumers’ demand but also how companies run their own business. Consumers are more conscious about the environment and demanding environmental friendly products and services. Consequently, the tourism industry currently faces increasing demands from consumers to achieve levels of environmental responsiveness. Thus, companies strive to implement environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices to gain competitive advantage, while still maintaining commercial success. Moreover, empirical evidence indicated that companies’ increased environmental support results in the development of customer trust and commitment as well as higher profitability. Thus, this study attempts to investigate the antecedents of loyalty in the hotel industry by examining the impacts of attitude toward the hotel’s environmental concern, subjective norms, perceived value and destination competitiveness on customers’ future intentions. Also, the comparative examination of these relationships between high and low environmental concern groups was included. Results revealed that perceived value is, followed by destination competiveness, the most powerful predictor of future intentions in both high and low environmental concern groups. In addition, attitude towards the hotel’s environmental concern significantly influenced future intentions solely in high environmental concern group. Contrary to our expectation, subjective norms exerted no significant effect on future intentions in both groups.