Corporate Social Responsibility and Customer Behavior Associated with Hotels in Zanzibar

Abstract

As part of their market segmentation, chain branding, and or the wider issue of customers’ increasing attention in the context of a low-carbon economy, hotels seem to be increasingly engaged in Corporate Social Responsibility activities to better capture their customer reaction, Yet there are limited studies at a micro-level examining the impact among various categories of hotels in Zanzibar. With the emphasis on environmental dimensions, this study focuses on investigating the impact of the existing Corporate Social Responsibility practices on customer behavior perspective targeting visitors, hoteliers and employees. Primary data using survey questionnaires were collected and involved tourists or visitors and hotels’ employees sample-sized of 140. The study adapts sequential mixed methods with quantitative and qualitative patterns and with purposive sampling technique the study takes 100 from the 140 respondents of selected hotels’ employees to provide information on the problem area and 40 tourists were selected randomly at different hotels as customers and by employing various multivariate analysis techniques results were achieved. At the 0.05 level of confidence, the study revealed that all of the four predictors: green promotion, recycling, friendly products and waste management have significant impact on the customer behavior in a positive direction. The results show that customers who have positive attitudes on green promotion, recycling, friendly products and waste management tend to be influenced in their behavioral change positively which then provide rooms and opportunities for stakeholders in the hospitality industry such as hotels in Zanzibar to attract more customers by improving issues like green promotion, recycling, friendly products and waste management in their surroundings. as a dynamically developing sector of the economy, tourism sector and in particular, hotel management should meet society’s expectations within the framework of minimizing negative effects on the natural environment and focus on corporate social responsibility as business strategy for long-term business vision.