What influences water conservation and towel reuse practices of hotel guests?
Graphical abstract
Introduction
The use of energy efficient light bulbs, towel reuse, waste/grey water treatment, and water conservation are regarded to be the popular and well-known eco-friendly practices adopted in the hotel industry (Bohdanowicz, 2006; Bruns-Smith et al., 2015, Chan et al., 2009, Dimara et al., 2017). Among these practices, towel reuse and water conservation are directly related to hotel guests' environmentally responsible behaviors. Hotels can save energy and reduce detergent use when customers reuse towels in the guest room (Bohner and Schlüter, 2014, Goldstein et al., 2008), and hotels can also lower grey water generation and save costs when patrons avoid the excessive use of water in the guest room (Untaru, Ispas, Candrea, Luca, & Epuran, 2016). Although hotel practitioners' primary aims to induce guests’ conservation behaviors are reducing costs (Bohner & Schlüter, 2014) and fulfilling governmental regulations/rules designed to preserve the environment (Han, 2015), these eco-friendly behaviors by hotel guests undoubtedly reduce the environmental impact of the hotel industry, contributing to a cleaner environment.
There are many studies devoted to the examination of the possible effect of individuals' traveling behaviors on the environment (Bruns-Smith et al., 2015, Chan, 2014, Chou and Chen, 2014, Goldstein et al., 2008, Han, 2014, Han et al., 2010, Van Riper and Kyle, 2014, Schultz et al., 2008, Untaru et al., 2016). Researchers in these studies made a general consensus that normative process comprising moral and social norms, emotional process encompassing anticipated pride and guilt, and habitual process comprising frequency of eco-friendly behaviors in daily life are central concepts in explicating travelers' environmentally responsible decision formation and behaviors. In particular, studies in various domains have shown that social norms (descriptive and injunctive) effectively facilitate pro-environmental behaviors (Goldstein et al., 2008, Schultz et al., 2008). Social norm refers to “rules and standards that are understood by members of a group, and that guide and/or constrain human behavior without the force of laws” (Cialdini & Trost, 1998, p. 152). Social norm is not a solitary concept that promotes conservation. A significant impact of moral norm on eco-friendly intention/behavior has been also identified in relevant literature (Klöckner, 2013, Stern et al., 1999, Van Riper and Kyle, 2014). This moral norm refers to one's internal moral obligation to perform/refrain from particular actions (Schwartz & Howard, 1981). In addition, the considerable impact of anticipated emotions has been reported on extended norm activation process (Han, 2014, Onwezen et al., 2013), and a positive influence of daily eco-friendly activities has been clearly reported on pro-environmental intention/behavior (Han et al., 2010, Untaru et al., 2016).
Despite the criticality of these above-mentioned concepts, it remains uncertain how anticipated feelings of pride and guilt affect guests' water conservation and towel reuse behaviors while staying at a hotel, and how these guests' daily activities of saving water and reusing towels influence such pro-environmental behaviors at a hotel. In addition, many studies in consumer behavior indicated that the internal aspect of normative processes (e.g., moral norm) should not be ignored not only in explicating hotel guests' environmentally friendly behaviors (Han, 2015) but also in explaining customers' general eco-friendly consumption activities (Bamberg et al., 2007, Klöckner and Matthies, 2004). Nevertheless, existing studies are mostly centered on the external/social dimension of normative processes (e.g., descriptive norm) for explicating lodging guests' pro-environmental behaviors (e.g., towel/linen reuse) (e.g., Bohner and Schlüter, 2014, Goldstein et al., 2008). In general, studies about hotel customers' water conservation and towel reuse behaviors in the extant literature somewhat underscored the importance of anticipated feelings, moral norm, and eco-friendly activities in everyday life. Moreover, a simultaneous approach comprising these variables along with descriptive and injunctive social norms for the explication of guests’ pro-environmental decision formation within one theoretical framework has been hardly made.
Given these voids, this research was designed (1) to explore if moral norm, social norms (descriptive and injunctive), anticipated feelings (pride and guilt), and daily eco-friendly activities (saving water and reusing towels in everyday life) are effective factors in promoting water conservation intention among hotel guests and to elicit towel reuse intention among hotel guests, (2) to develop a theoretical framework encompassing such determinants and test its predictive ability for guests’ pro-environmental decisions, and (3) to unearth the relative impact of moral (internal normative) process, social (external normative) process, affective process, and behavioral/habitual process on water conservation and towel reuse intentions at a hotel.
Section snippets
Two main guest conservation behaviors at a hotel
Lodging operations in the past few decades have increasingly been expected to uphold green programs as a common feature of their hotel businesses (Bruns-Smith et al., 2015). Although hotels' environmental commitment is an important requisite in order to introduce green initiatives/practices (Dimara et al., 2017, Teng et al., 2012), guests' engagement is essential in implementing such green initiatives/practices. Towel reuse and water conservation programs mainly needing guests’ engagement
Measurement development
In order to evaluate the research variables, we employed the validated measures from the previous studies in the extant literature (i.e., Ajzen, 1991, Bamberg et al., 2007, Han, 2014, Han and Hwang, 2017, Hwang and Hyun, 2017, Lyu and Hwang, 2017, Onwezen et al., 2013, Perugini and Bagozzi, 2001, Smith et al., 2012, Untaru et al., 2016). Multiple items were utilized for the evaluation of all study constructs. Specifically, three measurement items were used for moral norm (e.g., “Regardless of
Reliability and validity testing
A measurement model was created. Results of the CFA indicated the acceptable fit of the model to the data (Goodness-of-fit statistics: χ2 = 882.907, df = 314, χ2/df = 2.812, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.075, CFI = 0.927, IFI = 0.927, TLI = 0.912) (See Table 2). All items were loaded to their associated latent variables significantly at 0.01 level. Calculation of composite reliability revealed that the values were all greater than the minimum threshold of 0.60. As presented in Table 2, the values fell
Discussion
Within our theoretical framework, the criticality of moral norm in generating water conservation intention signified that a moral norm message in guest rooms can be a useful tool in inducing water saving behavior. In addition, the significance of descriptive norm in increasing towel reuse intention denoted that a descriptive norm message in guest rooms can be an effectual way to persuade guests' participation in a hotel's towel reuse program. Moreover, in our research, individuals' water
Conclusion
The normality of the data was assessed by estimating the skewness and kurtosis of each measurement item. As shown in Table 1, the values of skewness ranged from −0.567 to 0.108, and the kurtosis values ranged from −0.507 to 0.676. As values for skewness and kurtosis between −2.00 and + 2.00 are regarded to be acceptable in order to prove normal distribution (George & Mallery, 2010), our data set included no serious skewness and kurtosis problem. While travelers' tendencies or willingness to
Funding
This work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University (HY-2018).
Heesup Han is a Professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, Korea. His research interests include cultural tourism, heritage tourism, airline, medical tourism, green marketing. His papers have been selected as the most downloaded and read articles in many top-tier hospitality and tourism journals. Additional short note: As the first author, Heesup Han contributed to the research idea development, data collection, and the completion of the introduction,
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Heesup Han is a Professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, Korea. His research interests include cultural tourism, heritage tourism, airline, medical tourism, green marketing. His papers have been selected as the most downloaded and read articles in many top-tier hospitality and tourism journals. Additional short note: As the first author, Heesup Han contributed to the research idea development, data collection, and the completion of the introduction, discussion, and conclusion sections of this study.
Sunghyup Sean Hyun is an Associate Professor in the School of Tourism at Hanyang University. He received his MA in hospitality and tourism management in 2005 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and earned his Ph.D. in hospitality and tourism in 2009 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has published many papers in the area of hospitality and tourism marketing, focusing on brand equity, customer equity, advertising, emotions, and communication. Additional short note: As the second (corresponding) author, Sunghyup Sean Hyun contributed to the completion of the literature review, methodology, and result sections of this study.