The Role of Hotel Environmental Communication and Guests' Environmental Concern in Determining Guests' Behavioral Intentions

Over time, more and more hotels have begun to include sustainability policies into their operations management. Hotels go green for a variety of reasons, including cost savings, public funding, staff commitment, public scrutiny, investor relations, and general societal good. However, one of the primary motivations for hotels to go green is to respond to rising consumer awareness of environmental issues. Indeed, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of hotels' environmental impact and seem to appreciate hoteliers' efforts towards sustainability, enhancing customer satisfaction and contributing to the formation of positive behavioral intentions and indirectly increasing firms' competitiveness. By reason of that situation, many hotels started to introduce green practices in a proactive manner, with the double goal to involve green consumers and to improve their economic performance. Third-party verified eco-labels ensure that hotels meet environmental performance criteria and provide reliable communication to their customers in this context. We propose a conceptual framework to investigate whether green practices implemented by Italian "Legambiente Turismo" certified hotels contribute significantly to the formation of guests' positive behavioral intention toward green hotels and the importance of green communication on guest attitude and behavior, starting with a review of the literature on eco-labelled hotels. To test the hypotheses, a survey of visitors from two Italian hotels with the ecolabel was undertaken, and Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used. The PLS-SEM analysis leads to accepting eight out of the eleven hypotheses tested. Results from the model testing show the role played by guest environmental concern in influencing guests' perception of hotels' green communication and the role of the latter in influencing guest perception of hotel green practices. The findings of the study are useful for hotel managers and decision-makers because they clarify the relevance of environmental communication and guest environmental awareness in visitor recognition of hotels' environmental efforts. The study also confirms the link between green practices implementation and increased market awareness and loyalty to green hotels.