An application of theory of planned behavior to predict young Indian consumers' green hotel visit intention

Abstract

The study, being explorative, attempts to extend the social-psychological behavioral model i.e. Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by including two additional constructs viz. moral reflectiveness and conscientiousness to predict young Indian consumers' intention to visit green hotels. A self-administered questionnaire was employed to gather data from 295 consumers purposively and subsequently analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM). The attitude ranks high in merit for predicting the consumer's green hotel visit intention. Further, the relative importance of moral reflectiveness vis-à-vis conscientiousness has been observed more in predicting green hotel visit intention, however, vice versa is true while constituting attitude of consumers specific to green hotel choice intention. The findings also provide an extended support to the applicability and robustness of the TPB model in predicting young consumers' green hotel visit intention in the Indian context, as it has enhanced the predictive ability of the proposed conceptual model (from 37.5% to 42.1%). This study contributes to the existing theory and practice by providing useful insights about the attribution of conscientiousness and moral reflectiveness on young consumers' green hotel visit intention.