Adoption of green hotels in Malaysia: analyzing tourist attitudes towards sustainable practices.

Abstract

This study investigates the factors that influence tourists' decisions to choose green hotels in Malaysia, a country heavily reliant on tourism with slow progress in developing green hotels despite growing environmental concerns. This is a Theory of Planned Behavior study using a quantitative approach on data collected from 187 tourists, gathered through a judgmental sampling technique at a few tourist spots in Kuala Lumpur. The structural model’s results show that green advertisements directly influence tourists' intentions to stay at green hotels and also have an indirect effect through environmental attitudes. While environmental knowledge does not directly impact intentions, it shapes them indirectly by influencing environmental attitudes. The findings are limited in generalizability due to limits in research location and sampling technique. However, these findings are valuable for academics, tourism stakeholders and policymakers in expanding the knowledge and creating targeted strategies to promote sustainable tourism.