Loss or gain? The role of message framing in hotel guests’ recycling behaviour

Abstract

One of the major challenges for the tourism sector is enacting sustainable behaviours. A key strategy for hoteliers is developing persuasive messages, with the goal of encouraging guests’ voluntary participation in green programmes. Through the lens of prospect theory and construal level theory, the present study investigates to what extent a loss or gain-framed message influences recycling of hotel guests via a field and a laboratory experiment. The field experiment tests the moderating effect of message construal level (concrete or abstract) on the message frame that activate pro-environmental behaviour, while the laboratory study delves further into the mechanism by showing that perceived self-efficacy is the mechanism behind the activation of these behaviours. The findings from both studies suggest that hotel guests are more likely to engage in recycling behaviour when a concrete message is paired with a loss-framed message, because of a greater perceived self-efficacy. These results help to understand the theoretical psychological mechanisms and offer managerial implications for operators on how to engage guests to be active partners in sustainable tourism behaviours.

Keywords:

• Message framing
• construal level theory
• field experiment
• self-efficacy
• recycling behaviour
• sustainable tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Grazzini

Laura Grazzini is Research Fellow in Marketing at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence, Italy. Her research interests lie in the areas of consumer behavior, sustainable consumption, and experimental research.

Padmali Rodrigo

Padmali Rodrigo is a Research Fellow in Marketing and Sales at University of Portsmouth (UoP) UK. Prior to joining UoP, she was an associate lecturer at the Newcastle Business School, Faculty of Business and Law, Northumbria University. Her research interests are in international consumer behavior, travel & tourism, SME development and emerging markets.

Gaetano Aiello

Gaetano Aiello is Full Professor in Marketing at the at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence, Italy. His research interests lie in the areas of consumer behavior and strategic marketing. His work has been published in a number of international journals, such as Journal of Business Research and Psychology & Marketing, among others.

Giampaolo Viglia

Giampaolo Viglia is Reader in Marketing at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research interests lie in the areas of pricing, consumer decision-making and online reputation. His work has been published in a number of international journals, such as Tourism Management, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Psychology & Marketing.