Consumer behavior and environmental sustainability in tourism and hospitality: a review of theories, concepts, and latest research

Abstract

Diverse forms of environmental problems pose a serious threat to the natural environment. Environmental sustainability is the foremost topic in the contemporary tourism and hospitality industry. Environmentallysustainable consumer behavior is an important aspect of environmental protection, which eventually benefits the society. In order to better understand environmentally-sustainable consumption and promote environmentally responsible consumer behavior, this research provides a sound conceptualization of environmentally-sustainable consumer behavior, and presents a systematic review and perspective on theories (theory of reasoned action, norm activation theory, theory of planned behavior, model of goal-directed behavior, and value-belief-norm theory) established in tourism and environmental psychology. In addition, this study introduces the essential drivers of environmentally-sustainable consumer behavior (green image, pro-environmental behavior in everyday life, environmental knowledge, green product attachment, descriptive social norm, anticipated pride and guilt, environmental corporate social responsibility, perceived effectiveness, connectedness to nature, and green value). Lastly, this paper provides the values of the latest studies on the special issue of environmental sustainability and consumer behavior in tourism and hospitality. This study as an introductory paper along with other articles in this special section help enable a collaboration platform across tourism and hospitality fields in pursuit of universal goals for promoting pro-environmental consumption and environmental sustainability.

What Drives the Eco-Friendly Tourist Destination Choice? The Indian Perspective

“…They also correspond to the conviction about the need to shape pro-environmental awareness, which stimulates eco-friendly interest and sustainable practices, both in everyday life and in tourism [81,82]. Moreover, our research results also support Han [15] in encouraging tourism, consumer behaviour and environmental psychology academics to work in cooperation in pursuit of common goals for promoting pro-environmental tourism consumption and eco-friendly behaviour.…”

“…As pointed out by Han [15], comprehending the drivers of green/sustainable behaviour is crucial to designing effective strategies for minimising the negative environmental impacts of contemporary tourism (see also [78][79][80]). This is all the more important for an emerging market with a massive population such as India, due to the challenges related to energy conservation and emissions [10].…”

“…The TPB is quite often used to explain behaviour in leisure time, as well as proenvironmental behaviour [15]. For example, Mancha and Yoder [40] used the TPB to explain consumers' green behavioural intentions.…”

“…Scholars have been studying this issue for almost three decades, and the recent surge in green consumerism has attracted even more interest among scholars from various fields in examining what drives pro-ecological behaviour [3,12,13]. Pro-environmental behaviour, also referred to using various terms such as, but not limited to, green behaviour, environmentally sustainable consumer behaviour and eco-friendly consumption, has become a hot topic among tourism academics and practitioners [14,15]. This is due to a growing general environmental awareness, including a growing awareness of the environmental costs accompanying the development of tourism, which changes both tourist behaviour (trends in tourist demand) [16][17][18] and the tourism and hospitality industry [19].…”

Facilitators and Reducers of Korean Travelers’ Avoidance/Hesitation Behaviors toward China in the Case of COVID-19

“…Perugini and Bagozzi [ 26 ] indicate the prospect of feeling favorable or unfavorable affects when conducting or not conducting a particular action [ 27 ]. This conceptualization is in line with Han [ 28 ] who described these anticipated emotions are one’s expected positive/negative feelings after performing or not performing a specific action. In general, researchers agree that anticipated emotions have two dimensions (positive and negative) [ 28 , 29 , 30 ].…”