Elevating Morals, Elevating Actions: The Interplay of CSR, Transparency, and Guest Pro-Social and Pro-Environmental Behaviors in Hotels

In the hospitality industry, corporate social responsibility practices are getting more recognition as a strategic driver of stakeholders’ sustainable behaviors. This study creates and tests a moderated serial mediation model that connects hotel CSR activities to guests’ pro-environmental behavior (PROE). In addition, moral elevation (ME) and pro-social behaviors of guests (PSO) are posited as affective and behavioral mediating mechanisms, whereas the perceived transparency (TRA) of hotel actions is investigated as a moderator. The survey data were collected from 426 hotel guests who had stayed in hotels in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze it. The findings reveal that CSR does have a positive effect on ME, which sequentially makes ME affect PSO and PROE behavior positively. The research shows that the moderator TRA also amplifies the relationship strength between CSR and ME, which suggests that transparent actions of hotels do have a positive emotional impact on guests. The research contributes to hospitality literature and also sustainability literature by identifying ME as an emotional mechanism and TRA as a moderating condition that alter guests’ behaviors. As managerial implications, the research underlines the value of creating CSR practices that are both transparent and authentic to guests and stakeholders to ultimately maximize the engagement of guests in the context of sustainability.