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UM E-Theses Collection (澳門大學電子學位論文庫)

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Title

An exploratory study to examine consumer attitudes towards "green" practices in Macau's hotels

English Abstract

This study examined the Chinese visitors’ visit intention and willingness to pay more for hotels that have adopted green practices. Intention factors suggested in Theory of Planned Behavioral (TPB), namely behavioral belief, normative belief, control belief, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control were assessed in relation to visit intention and willingness to pay more. In this study, quantitative methodology was adopted. A total of 480 questionnaires were distributed to Chinese visitors who have previously stayed in Macau’s hotels. 369 valid responses were received. This study has proven the factors described in Theory of Planned behaviors (namely attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control) are valid positive predictors for visit intention while attitude was the most significant factor for explaining the green hotel visit intention. Although when attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control were applied to test the Chinese tourists’ willingness to pay more, only attitude and subjective norm were significantly related to the willingness to pay more. No significant relationship was found between perceived behavioral control and willingness to pay more. However, when the fuzzy set analysis was performed using attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control together with tourists’ visit intention to green hotels. Attitude and subjective norms were found sufficient on explaining Chinese visitors’ willingness to pay more for green hotels. In addition, the fuzzy set analysis provided an insight to hotel operators that if there is lack of resource on setting up marketing strategies for green hotels, improvement on visitors’ attitude and behavioral belief are the biggest priority to be targeted, normative belief and subjective norms factors could be considered if the resource is more plentiful. Clearly, the ultimate solution to increase customers’ willingness to pay more for green hotels is to increase the consumers’ attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. More importantly, this study concluded that Chinese tourists have preference on patronizing green hotels when they travel, though they are not willing to pay more to stay in green hotel. This provided several implications. First of all, it implied that “green” hotel concepts are being accepted by Chinese visitors, neglecting the fact that it might bring along small amount of inconvenience when they are staying in such hotels. On the other hand, as the Chinese visitors are not willing to pay extra to stay in green hotels, the potential extra cost needed for hotels to invest in adopting more green practices should be absorbed/funded somewhere else (for example, the hoteliers could seek the funding from the government). The government could take this opportunity to provide financial and technical supports to hotels, with given terms and conditions that the hotels should achieve green objectives set by the government. Finally, the finding from this study also implied that Chinese customers are showing preference on products with “green” concepts added.

Issue date

2014.

Author

Tang, Weng Kin

Faculty

Faculty of Business Administration

Degree

M.B.A.

Subject

Hotels -- Macau

Hotel management -- Macau

Green movement -- Macau

Consumers -- Attitudes

Supervisor

Chan, Sow Hup

Files In This Item

Full-text (Intranet only)

Location
1/F Zone C
Library URL
991008719969706306