Fostering customers' pro-environmental behavior at a museum

ABSTRACT

Understanding visitors' pro-environmental behavior is vital as sustainability is currently a critical issue in the museum industry, yet visitors' pro-environmental decision-making process has not been sufficiently investigated. This study fills this void in the extant tourism literature. While the theoretical base for comprehending the nature of museum visitors' pro-environmental behaviors is still in the introduction stage, our proposed framework for encouraging pro-environmental behavior among museum visitors including cognitive variables, affective variables, willingness to sacrifice, connectedness to nature and pro-environmental intentions was supported through empirical testing. The present study also contributes to helping museum researchers and practitioners clearly understand the dynamic role of each study construct in generating museum visitors' intentions for environmentally responsible behaviors while visiting a museum.

KEYWORDS:

• Green intention
• anticipated affect
• willing to sacrifice
• museum
• connectedness to nature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean Government (MSIP) [grant number 2015R1A5A7037751].

Notes on contributors

Heesup Han

Heesup Han is a professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Sejong University, South Korea. His research interests include cultural tourism, heritage tourism, airline, medical tourism and green marketing. His papers have been selected as the most downloaded and read articles in many top-tier hospitality and tourism journals.

Sunghyup Sean Hyun

Sunghyup Sean Hyun is an associate professor in the School of Tourism, Hanyang University, South Korea. He received his MA degree in hospitality and tourism management in 2005 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and earned his PhD degree in hospitality and tourism in 2009 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has published many papers in the area of hospitality and tourism marketing, focusing on brand equity, customer equity, advertising, emotions and communication.