Eco-friendly hotels Guests are increasingly asking to skip every day room cleansing or to make use of their towels greater than once. At the identical time Hospitality researchers have long assumed that guests support these efforts to advertise sustainability uncomfortable And undesirableHowever, my research suggests that this isn’t – or not – the case.
A colleague and I conducted an internet survey to check participants' explicit and implicit attitudes toward various environmentally friendly practices, reminiscent of using refillable shampoo dispensers, actively saving water, and changing bedsheets every three days as an alternative of every day. When we checked out explicit attitudes—that’s, their conscious, goal-directed beliefs—we found that folks don’t associate these practices with inconvenience or discomfort, suggesting that consumer attitudes toward these measures are more positive than researchers previously thought.
Our study has been published in March 2024 within the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
Understanding customer attitudes is critical for any business, because it is for market scientists like myself. It can assist firms higher reply to customer needs, improve the guest experience, and promote sustainable practices. Additionally, by adapting green offerings to evolving consumer expectations, firms can assist protect the environment while meeting customer needs.
Our results could help hotels and similar businesses which have been hesitant to speak their sustainability practices to their customers. Rather, our findings suggest that managers ought to be more confident in promoting their eco-friendly initiatives. It can actually create a more positive image for his or her firms by showing that they try to act in an environmentally conscious way.
When we compared these explicit attitudes with participants' implicit or unconscious attitudes, we also found that folks don’t find environmentally friendly measures inconvenient. However, the connection was not as strong as their explicit attitudes and fairly provided evidence of a “green gap“ – or the difference between what people say about sustainability and what they really think.
In other words, when individuals are asked directly about their feelings about sustainability, they often say they’re in favour of it. However, when this sense about sustainability is assessed using a psychological instrument reminiscent of the Implicit association testthis support becomes slightly weaker – nevertheless it remains to be there.
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