Tourists’ perceptions of green building design and their intention of staying in green hotel

Abstract

Hotel developers incorporate green building design to save on capital and operation cost. Hotel operators adopt green practice to affect tourists’ intention of staying (IoS). This paper recognises the important contribution of green building design and eco-service provision to green hotels. It investigates the internal relationships of tourists’ environmental concern (EC), their perceived importance of green building design (PIGBD) and their IoS in green hotels. A moderating regression analysis was adopted to validate the proposed tourists behavioural pattern based on a survey sample of 161 tourists from Hong Kong. The results reveal tourists’ EC positively affects their IoS, and their PIGBD is proved to be a moderating factor of the EC-IoS relation. It implies that tourists’ IoS in green hotels is influenced by the level of their awareness and perceptions of green building design attributes. Given that green building design is often an omitted element in the previous hospitality literature, this paper highlights its potential role and implications in facilitating sustainable practices in the hospitality industry. Identifying the potential moderating factors of tourists’ EC-IoS relation can assist the development of green marketing strategy, which adds value to the tourism and hospitality industry. From a social interest perspective, it is crucial to raise tourists’ eco-literacy in all the ‘green ends’ including green building design of hotels.