Travelling green : Variables influencing students’ intention to select a green hotel

Abstract: Problematization: Tourism has a major impact on the environment. However, there is a conflict of interest making it difficult for the hotel business to decrease this impact. On the one hand, there is a pressure for environmentally friendly behaviour from society. On the other hand, the customers want to be pampered during their hotel stay. This makes it necessary to further investigate what influences customers’ intention to select a green hotel. Therefore this thesis examines students’ intention to select a green hotel. Since, it might make it easier for hotels to design and implement strategies to be greener, if they know what is important. Purpose: The aim with this thesis is to examine how the variables subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, perceived moral obligation and environmental awareness influence students’ intention to select green hotels. The main theory used is the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). However, to make the TPB model fit better to the context green hotels, the variables perceived moral obligation and environmental awareness were added. The reason for adding these variables was because they are closely entwined with each other and is argued in previous research argues they influence environmentally friendly behaviour. Methodology: This study used an online questionnaire and a small experiment in the questionnaire. The sample consisted of students from Kristianstad University. Conclusion: The result of this study shows that all the hypotheses were rejected and therefore the null hypotheses are retained.