Structural Model of Key Determinants of Customer Loyalty in Organic Dining Restaurants Within Green Hotels

This study moves beyond the static view prevalent in hospitality loyalty research by developing and longitudinally testing a process-oriented model of loyalty formation. Recognizing that loyalty is a dynamic outcome, we employ a three-wave panel design with a three-month lag, surveying 562 customers of organic restaurants within green-certified hotels. Data are analyzed using a Cross-Lagged Panel Model (CLPM) to meticulously map the temporal interplay among key antecedents, controlling for autoregressive effects and covariates. The findings provide robust evidence for a specific cognitive-to-affective sequence: perceptions of food quality at one time point shape subsequent judgments of perceived value, which in turn drive customer satisfaction, ultimately fostering loyalty in a succeeding period. Crucially, the CLPM also reveals that food quality and price fairness exert significant, direct time-lagged effects on loyalty, suggesting the presence of dual psychological pathways. By establishing temporal precedence and mapping sequential mediation, this study offers a more causally robust and managerially actionable understanding of how customer loyalty evolves.