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Green Consumer Behavior and Green Brands in the Tourism/Hospitality Industry

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Tourism, Culture, and Heritage".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 17440

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Tourism Management, Jeju National University, 63243, 102, Jejudaehak-ro, Jeju-si, Jeju-do, Republic of Korea
Interests: ESG in hospitality; eco-tourism; island tour
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Tourism Management, Mokpo National University, Yeongsan-ro 1666, Cheonggyemyeon, Muan-gun 58554, Republic of Korea
Interests: green tourism marketing; sustainable urban tourism; sustainable tourism economy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Tourism Management, Kongju National University, 32588, #56, Gongjudaehak-ro, Gongju-si, Republic of Korea
Interests: tourist behavior; tourism brand management; green marketing in tourism

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Guest Editor
Department of Tourism Managment, Gangneung-Wonju National University, 25457, 7 Jukheon-gil, Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, Republic of Korea
Interests: green travel; mice; tourism resources

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The green consumer behavior can be identified as the premeditated behavior of choosing products or services that are more focused on eco-friendliness. People are usually inspired by various issues related to environmental or social aspects to preserve natural resources and solve any environmental problems. In particular, in the tourism/hospitality industry, green behavior is recognized as an important keyword for both businesses and consumers. Specifically, companies are striving to build a positive social image and brand according to environmental preservation with concepts such as the ESG. In addition, consumers are also participating in preserving sustainable tourism resources through green actions. Therefore, the scope of this Special Issue, “Green Consumer Behavior and Green Brands in the Tourism/Hospitality Industry”, covers various environmentally friendly behaviors, activities, business, and attitudes by customers as well as companies in the tourism/hospitality industry. The Guest Editor encourages the submission of quantitative and qualitative studies that derive from research articles dealing with any aspects of sustainability of green consumer behavior and brand in the tourism/hospitality sector.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Green/eco-consumer behavior;
  • Green/eco-tourism;
  • Green/eco-brands in hospitality industry;
  • Green/eco-service;
  • Green/eco-food.

I/We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Sangmook Lee
Dr. Hyo-Jin Kim
Dr. Seunghwan Lee
Dr. Sangguk Kang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • green consumer behavior
  • green brand
  • green service
  • green product
  • green food
  • hospitality industry

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

28 pages, 6540 KiB  
Article
Leveraging Spectral Clustering and Long Short-Term Memory Techniques for Green Hotel Recommendations in Saudi Arabia
by Abdullah Alghamdi
Sustainability 2025, 17(5), 2328; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17052328 - 6 Mar 2025
Viewed by 743
Abstract
Online recommendation agents have demonstrated their value in various contexts by helping users navigate information overload, supporting decision-making, and influencing user behavior. There is a lack of studies focusing on recommendation systems for green hotels that utilize user-generated content from social networking and [...] Read more.
Online recommendation agents have demonstrated their value in various contexts by helping users navigate information overload, supporting decision-making, and influencing user behavior. There is a lack of studies focusing on recommendation systems for green hotels that utilize user-generated content from social networking and e-commerce platforms. While numerous studies have explored the use of real-world datasets for hotel recommendations, the development of recommendation systems specifically for green hotels remains underexplored, particularly in the context of Saudi Arabia. This study attempts to develop a new approach for green hotel recommendations using text mining and Long Short-Term Memory techniques. Latent Dirichlet Allocation is used to identify the main aspects of users’ preferences from the user-generated content, which will help the recommender system to provide more accurate recommendations to the users. Long Short-Term Memory is used for preference prediction based on numerical ratings. To better perform recommendations, a clustering technique is used to overcome the scalability issue of the proposed recommender system, specifically when there is a large amount of data in the datasets. Specifically, a spectral clustering algorithm is used to cluster the users’ ratings on green hotels. To evaluate the proposed recommendation method, 4684 reviews were collected from Saudi Arabia’s green hotels on the TripAdvisor platform. The method was evaluated for its effectiveness in solving sparsity issues, recommendation accuracy, and scalability. It was found that Long Short-Term Memory better predicts the customers’ overall ratings on green hotels. The comparison results demonstrated that the proposed method provides the highest precision (Precision at Top @5 = 89.44, Precision at Top @7 = 88.21) and lowest prediction error (Mean Absolute Error = 0.84) in hotel recommendations. The author discusses the results and presents the research implications based on the findings of the proposed method. Full article
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22 pages, 721 KiB  
Article
When Mindful Consumption Meets Green Purchase Intention: Empirical Evidence on How a Mindful Mindset Influences Tourists
by Dongyi Ji, Siwarit Pongsakornrungsilp, Pimlapas Pongsakornrungsilp and Vikas Kumar
Sustainability 2025, 17(3), 1266; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17031266 - 5 Feb 2025
Viewed by 1501
Abstract
This study assessed the impact of mindful consumption on tourists’ green purchase intention and explore the mediating roles played by health consciousness, ethical self-identity, and environmental consciousness. Through an online survey, multi-source data were collected from tourists across China, and SmartPLS SEM was [...] Read more.
This study assessed the impact of mindful consumption on tourists’ green purchase intention and explore the mediating roles played by health consciousness, ethical self-identity, and environmental consciousness. Through an online survey, multi-source data were collected from tourists across China, and SmartPLS SEM was used for analysis to accommodate the requirements of complex models and the testing of mediating effects. The findings indicate that mindful consumption directly enhances green purchase intention and exerts an indirect effect through the mediating roles of ethical self-identity and environmental consciousness. However, the impact of health consciousness on green purchase intention was insignificant. This study is the first to link mindful consumption to tourists’ green purchasing behavior, constructing a critical framework to explore how mindful consumption influences green purchase intention. Additionally, it verifies the partial mediating roles of ethical self-identity and environmental consciousness in this process. Tourism stakeholders can utilize the proposed framework to implement strategies that promote tourists’ green purchasing behavior, therefore fostering sustainable development. Full article
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16 pages, 915 KiB  
Article
Intentions of Green Behavior by Mountain Climbers at the Hallasan National Park and World Heritage Site
by Hyojin Kim, Doohwan Bae and Sangmook Lee
Sustainability 2024, 16(7), 2960; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16072960 - 2 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1529
Abstract
In the field of social sciences, there has been a relative lack of empirical research analyzing the influential relationship between tourism motivations for visiting the Hallasan National Park and meaningful variables corresponding to this tourism motivation, and there has specifically been a lack [...] Read more.
In the field of social sciences, there has been a relative lack of empirical research analyzing the influential relationship between tourism motivations for visiting the Hallasan National Park and meaningful variables corresponding to this tourism motivation, and there has specifically been a lack of such research targeting tourists who visit and recognize the value of Hallasan National Park. Therefore, the current study aims to empirically analyze the relationship between tourism motivations and their impact on the image of the Hallasan National Park, as well as their place attachment and intention of green behavior. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the revitalization and promotion of tourism in Jeju Island by improving the image of the Hallasan National Park. This study established and tested a research model based on the structural relationship among tourism motivation, emotional image of the Hallasansan National Park, place attachment, and intention of green behavior from the perspectives of tourists. First, the findings of this study confirm that the motivation of tourists to visit the Hallasan National Park directly affects the emotional image, place attachment, and intention of green behavior. Second, this study demonstrates that the emotional image formed by tourists is a variable that directly affects place attachment. Lastly, this study demonstrates that the place attachment formed by tourists does not appear to have a direct effect on their green behavior intention. This study concludes by discussing the strategic implications and limitations of this work. Full article
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20 pages, 2151 KiB  
Article
Greenwashing Behavior in Hotels Industry: The Role of Green Transparency and Green Authenticity
by Mansour Alyahia, Alaa M. S. Azazz, Sameh Fayyad, Ibrahim A. Elshaer and Abuelkassem A. A. Mohammad
Sustainability 2024, 16(3), 1050; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16031050 - 25 Jan 2024
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 12395
Abstract
Greenwashing has become a pervasive phenomenon in the tourism and hospitality sector, posing significant challenges and potential reputational damage to green hotels. Despite its prevalence, research on mitigating greenwashing’s influence on guest trust and behavior remains limited. This study addresses this gap by [...] Read more.
Greenwashing has become a pervasive phenomenon in the tourism and hospitality sector, posing significant challenges and potential reputational damage to green hotels. Despite its prevalence, research on mitigating greenwashing’s influence on guest trust and behavior remains limited. This study addresses this gap by investigating the moderating roles of green authenticity (GA) and green transparency (GTR) in the relationship between greenwashing and guest green trust (GT), ultimately influencing patronage intentions (PI) towards green hotels. Employing a quantitative approach, the study utilized a questionnaire survey administered to 309 participants, capturing their experiences with green hotels. Subsequent structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis in Smart PLS 4 confirmed several key findings. Firstly, hotel greenwashing negatively impacted green trust and subsequent patronage intentions, encompassing both intentions to stay (IS) at green hotels and willingness to pay a premium (WPP) for green hotels. Secondly, the study established green trust as a significant mediator in the greenwashing–patronage relationship. Most importantly, the analysis revealed the crucial moderating roles of both green authenticity and green transparency. Increased perceptions of GA and GTR significantly attenuated the negative influence of greenwashing on green trust and, consequently, strengthened the positive relationship between GT and PI. These findings suggest that fostering genuine environmentally friendly practices and ensuring clear communication of sustainability efforts can effectively counteract the detrimental effects of greenwashing on green-hotel patronage. The study’s implications extend to practical considerations for green-hotel managers, offering insights into preventive measures to diminish the adverse effects of greenwashing, thereby contributing to the long-term sustainability of their operations. Full article
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