The Influence of Eco-friendly Attitudes on Tourists’ Intention Toward Green Hotels

Abstract

The increasing awareness in environmental issue drives companies to implement green practice in the business. Therefore, some hotels name themselves as green hotels in order to attract potential customers. This study examines tourists’ eco-friendly attitudes and the effect on their intention toward green hotels. The eco-friendly attitudes were measured by tourists’ perception based on the attributes, such as, severity of environmental problems, inconvenience of being environmental friendly, importance of being environmental friendly, and level of responsibility of business corporations. Therefore, tourists were asked about their intentions to visit, to engage in word-of-mouth behaviors, and to pay more for a green hotel. Questionnaires were distributed to the domestic and international tourists in Juanda International Airport Surabaya using convenience sampling technique. The study shows that tourists have positive responses in environmental issues; however, they tend not to separate piles of garbage for recycling reason. The result reveals that tourists’ eco-friendly attitudes significantly influence their intention to visit, to engage in word-of-mouth behaviors, and to pay more for green hotels. Partially, attitudes in being environmental friendly make the largest unique contribution in intention to visit while perception of environmental problem contributes the most in word-of-mouth intention. In addition, intention to pay more is highly affected by tourists’ inconvenience of being environmental friendly.