Marketing sustainable tourism: the role of value orientation, well-being and credibility

Abstract

Marketing for sustainable tourism primarily attracts customers with a biospheric–altruistic value orientation. To reach a broader consumer group and also persuade people with a self-enhancement orientation to book sustainable hotels, the effectiveness of three different communication styles (emotionality levels, amount of sustainability information and inclusion of a label) is investigated, considering the consumer’s value orientation. An experiment with 337 participants was conducted to analyze the effects of communication on consumer perceptions of well-being and credibility. Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to compare the impacts of communication style on participant’s attitude toward booking a sustainable hotel, mediated by well-being and credibility. The results highlight significantly different communication effects among the two contrasting target groups. Consumers who are highly interested in sustainability (biospheric–altruistic value orientation) are persuaded by messages that include details about the hotel’s sustainability performance, in order to increase the social–environmental well-being, whereas for customers who are less interested in sustainability (self-enhancement value orientation), a self-referential emotionally communication is essential, as it increases the emotional well-being. Inconsistent findings regarding the role of communication in raising the perception of credibility were obtained.

Keywords:

• Communication effects
• consumer attitudes
• multigroup structural equation modeling
• positive emotions
• sustainability label

Disclosure statement

We hereby clearly state that the findings reported in the manuscript have not been published previously, and that no competing financial interests exist.

Notes

1 During the check of the regression model assumptions, one outlier was removed from this group. Therefore, the final group size was 129.

2 As social–environmental well-being and emotional well-being have positive emotions as a common cause, the correlation between the error terms of both concepts was included in the proposed model. These emotion dimensions correlate strongly for people with a self-enhancement value orientation (B = 0.49, SE = 0.10, p < .001) and for people with a biospheric–altruistic preference (B = 0.59, SE = 0.15, p < .001).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant S-64307-03-01

Notes on contributors

Friederike Vinzenz

Friederike Vinzenz (M.A., 2015), is working as a research assistant and is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media Psychology and Effects at the University of Zurich. In research and teaching, she focuses on media effects, persuasion, emotions and statistics.

Julianna Priskin

Julianna Priskin (Ph.D., 2006) is professor of tourism at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. She is focusing on sustainable tourism management.

Werner Wirth

Werner Wirth (Ph.D., 1994), is full professor for empirical research and head of Department of Media Psychology and Effects at the University of Zurich. His research focuses on cognitive, emotional and persuasive aspects of media use, media reception and media effects.

Sindhuri Ponnapureddy

Sindhuri Ponnapureddy (M.A., 2012) is a research associate at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and a doctoral candidate at the University of Zurich. Her research interests are sustainable tourism and marketing.

Timo Ohnmacht

Timo Ohnmacht (Ph.D., 2009) researches and teaches in the field of tourism, transport and society at the Competence Center for Mobility at the Department of Economics at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.