Empirical investigation of the roles of attitudes toward green behaviors, overall image, gender, and age in hotel customers' eco-friendly decision-making process

This study examined hotel customers' eco-friendly decision-making processes. Specifically, the current study tested the relationships among attitude toward green behaviors (ATGB), overall image (OI), visit intention (VI), word-of-mouth intention (WOMI), and willingness to pay more (WPM) by considering the effects of gender and age in a green hotel context. The results of structural equation analyses showed that OI is a positive function of ATGB and that OI significantly affects VI, WOMI, and WPM. Additionally, the findings from a structural modeling comparison revealed that OI completely mediates the effect of ATGB on components of behavioral intentions. Subsequent tests for metric invariances demonstrated that the relationships among study variables were generally stronger among females and high age groups. However, only the paths from OI to VI, WOMI, and WPM in the gender group and from OI to WPM in the age group were statistically significant. Implications and future research issues were discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.