Are eco-friendly hotels inconvenient? An Implicit Association Test

Abstract

In the extant literature, findings about customers' attitudes and intentions to patronize eco-friendly hotels are mixed. Both favorable associations, such as satisfaction, and unfavorable links (for example, barriers such as inconvenience) are evident in the literature. These studies examined the explicit attitudes of consumers, which have been deemed sensitive and potentially generate social desirability bias. Conversely, this study employed the Implicit Association Test, which measured reaction times to extract customers’ implicit stereotypes towards eco-friendly hotels, followed by a questionnaire-based survey to assess their explicit attitudes. With a sample of 297 American travelers, the findings of the implicit and explicit tests show moderate and strong relationships between eco-friendly hotels and the convenience concept, respectively. That is, our findings show that customers do not attribute inconvenience to eco-friendly hotels. The implications of the study are significant given the emphasis on responsible tourism as a domain of study in which customer attitudes arguably play a significant role in a changing environment.