Exploring Malaysian Attendee Attitude towards Green Practices in Exhibitions

Green or sustainability is no longer an option for the event planners and it is becoming a critical element to stay competitive in the event industry. However, there is limited knowledge to help the event planners to understand and identify the acceptable go green initiatives when organising events. Although many research have been conducted on consumers' attitude and behaviour towards green marketing, green products and green hotels, but few investigation on the attendee attitude towards green practices in exhibitions. Therefore this study seeks to explore the factors that influence Malaysian attendees' attitude towards green practices in exhibitions. Data were collected through judgement sampling from Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre exhibition attendees. Overall, 120 valid responses of 150 distributed survey questionnaire were collected and analysed by using SPSS to test the hypothesis. It is found that there is a significant relationship of environmental attitude, media influence and level of acceptance to go green between Malaysian attendees' attitude towards green practices in exhibitions. This implies that attendees are conscious about environmentally friendly practices in events and key players in the industry should encourage the implementation and involvement of green practices in exhibition as a preferred business model. Meanwhile, organisers are advised to integrate social media and online communities to approach the attendee to attend future exhibition.