Sustainable hospitality as a business strategy: a multi-stage analysis of guest sustainability participation, green trust, and behavioral outcomes in hotels

Hotel sustainability programs depend on guests who believe a hotel’s environmental claims and cooperate with its routines. Drawing on signaling theory, this study examines guest sustainability participation as the behavioral link between hotel sustainability signals and guests’ broader pro-environmental behavior. Survey data from 412 guests who had stayed at a five-star hotel in Thailand that they identified as sustainability-oriented were analyzed with PLS-SEM. Sustainability communication and sustainability image were positively related to green trust, whereas perceived sustainability practices, although weakly and positively correlated with trust on their own, showed a negative partial association with it once communication and image were held constant, a suppression pattern. Green trust was positively related to hotel-specific sustainability attitude, which was positively related to guests’ willingness to participate in hotel sustainability routines. Participation was positively associated with self-reported daily pro-environmental behavior, more strongly among guests with more prior sustainable hotel experience, and weakly related to revisit intention, an outcome for which the model has almost no explanatory power. Because the data are cross-sectional and self-reported, the results describe associations consistent with the proposed sequence rather than causal or temporal effects. The study shows how credibility-building signals connect to guest cooperation and where the business case for participation programs is weakest.