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The purpose of this paper is to understand restaurant operators’ perception towards key areas of green practices that could be adopted in the future operations of the restaurant business in Malaysia.

The paper used a qualitative approach through face-to-face interviews. Five restaurant operators who operated their independently owned casual upscale restaurants in the Klang Valley were selected as the respondents for the interviews.

Eight areas of green practices adapted from Hu et al. (2010) have been commented and proposed to be served as a guideline to design the Environmental Management System (EMS) for restaurants to go green in Malaysia. Although the feedback given on the feasibility of implementing these green practices provided by the restaurant operators were generally positive, challenges lies ahead in getting them to adopt these green practices. It required understanding of the difficulties and motivations of implementing these practices.

An in-depth understanding from the voices of restaurant operators was essential for further policy formulation and implementation in fostering the green practices which in turn can serve as a “win-win” situation for all parties.

There seems to be a dearth of studies conducted on the perceptions of restaurant operators about the feasibility of green practices adoption in the operation of the restaurants in Malaysia. The implementation of EMS or the adoption of green practices was a vital missing-link among the restaurants. The outcome of this paper was expected to provide new ideas and knowledge on the areas of green practices to be adopted as the environmental guidelines to operate restaurants in Malaysia.

This study identifies an effective communication strategy for promoting restaurants’ green efforts to customers by using different types of green advertisement messages. This study aims to investigate the relative persuasiveness of attribute-based versus benefit-based appeal messages in green restaurant advertisements and their matching effect with different types of green practices in the restaurant (environment-focused green practices vs food-focused green practices) and with different types of restaurants (fine dining vs fast casual dining) on customers’ attitude and visiting intention toward green restaurants. Furthermore, the study examines a moderating effect of restaurant types to assess whether the matching effects between types of messages and types of green practices work differently within the different types of restaurants.

A 2 (attribute-based vs benefit-based messages) × 2 (food-focused vs environment-focused green practices) × 2 (fast casual vs fine dining restaurants) between-subject experimental design was used to test the proposed hypotheses. An online scenario-based survey was developed and distributed to online panel members in the USA. Ultimately, 363 responses were used for data analyses. ANOVA and t-test were conducted to analyze the data.

The results indicate that benefit-based messages are generally more persuasive than attribute-based messages in green restaurant advertisements. For restaurants with food-focused green practices, an advertising message emphasizing the benefit of food-focused green practices (benefit-based message) would be more effective than an advertising message describing their tangible efforts to show the greenness of the restaurant (attribute-based message). For fine dining restaurants, a green advertisement with benefit-based information would be more persuasive than attribute-based information. This study further showed that the aforementioned interaction effect between types of green practices and types of messages was salient for fine dining restaurants.

This research is one of the few studies in restaurant management to examine the green communication effectiveness in terms of the types of green practices and the types of advertising message framing. By comparing the relative persuasiveness of green advertisements on consumers’ attitudes and behavior intentions, this study provides suggestions for restaurant professionals to make effective green communication strategies based on the type of green practices the restaurant primarily uses and the type of restaurant the manager is operating.

This study aims at analyzing the impact of green restaurants' sustainable practices (food safety, food sustainability practices, food quality, and environmental sensitivity) on consumer satisfaction and revisit intention.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 417 participants who had recently experienced the services of leading green restaurants. The study draws upon the prevailing literature to test a series of research hypotheses through structural equation modeling.

The findings of the study have confirmed that sustainable practices such as food safety, food sustainability practices, environmental sensitivity, and food quality significantly influence consumers' satisfaction and revisit intentions. The willingness to pay has been found as a sensitive issue as it moderates the relationship between consumer satisfaction and revisit intention.

This study provides important insights for the businesses operating in foodservice industry. The study suggests important strategies to the restaurant business owners for improving their consumers' satisfaction and revisit intentions. These strategies may help foodservice businesses in building strong brand reputation and a competitive edge over others.

This study contributes to the food service literature by examining the restaurants' environmental legitimacy (food safety, food sustainability practices, food quality, and environmental sensitivity) from consumers' perspective. Moreover, the current study also fills the gap in literature by expanding the knowledge of consumers' pro-environmental behavior in the context of developing nations. Besides, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is among very few studies, which have emphasized on analyzing consumer satisfaction and revisit intention based on their experience in a green restaurant on particular sustainable parameters.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate customers' perceptions and purchase intentions related to green practices in an upscale, green certified restaurant, on a university campus located in the southeastern USA. Design/methodology/approach

The survey was adapted from a previous survey conducted by DiPietro et al.

The results revealed that customers believed that they are knowledgeable about green practices but they would still like to know more about them. Customers also expressed preferences related to restaurants that are environmentally friendly and use environmentally safe products. Moreover, female customers and people with higher education were more conscious regarding green practices. Customers who utilized green practices at home intended to visit green restaurants more often. Research limitations/implications

The respondents were sampled from an upscale university restaurant, and were mostly within the age range of 50 and older (60.7 percent), which is not typical of a university foodservice operation. The restaurant used in this study catered more to faculty, staff and other professionals close to the university, and did not have a large student customer base. Another limitation of the study is that the prior knowledge and preferences of respondents regarding green practices was not measured. Because of the use of a convenience sample, the results are not generalizeable, but can be used to further research in this area. Practical implications

The practical implications of the study are that restaurant managers should target more specific marketing strategies and employee training related to green practices. Green restaurants that have a high proportion of female and highly educated customers should pay attention to promoting green practices, especially in areas that are visible to the guest, as these are the respondents who had the highest preference for being informed about green practices. Originality/value

The current study looked at an upscale, on-campus university restaurant that had a very highly educated and older population. Previous studies analysed fast food or casual dining restaurant perspectives. Compared to the Hu et al.

The study aims to investigate the adoption of green certification programs by restaurants. More specifically, this study has three objectives: to examine the relationships between green certification program scores and customers’ perceptions, duration of green certification and green brand image and food-focused green practices and green brand image.

The authors collected 25,098 TripAdvisor reviews, along with associated patron demographics, for 70 green certified restaurants. To investigate the hypotheses, the authors first used structural topic modeling to discover latent themes relevant to green restaurant practices. Thereafter, the authors used factorial Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) to examine the association between formal certification participation and customers’ green perceptions.

The results showed that customers were more likely to perceive a green restaurant image after visiting green certified restaurants with higher certification ratings and green certification periods of longer duration.

The current study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this study uses post-visit online reviews written by customers of certified green restaurants to understand customers’ natural responses more precisely. Second, the study captures the degree of green commitment by applying information about formal certification programs, where other studies have relied on hypothetical scenarios or survey questions to examine the impact of green attributes on customer perceptions.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the adoption of green certification programs by restaurants empirically with data drawn from actual user-generated content (i.e. TripAdvisor).

This paper aims to investigate the influence of five environment-related factors on green restaurant patronage intention (IN) among restaurant patrons in Malaysiaxd.

The unit of analysis was individual restaurant patrons who dined at casual dining restaurants when the survey was conducted. Among the 600 questionnaires distributed, a total of 500 were deemed usable and sufficient for data analysis. Descriptive, reliability, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to analyze the data.

Respondents were concerned about the welfare and interests of others and demonstrated a positive attitude toward the environment and green purchasing. However, these three factors do not influence IN. Conversely, specific attitudes toward green restaurant practices and green purchase behavior determine such intention. This shows that a specific attitude measure serves as a better and closer predictor to predict a specific behavioral intention in a green restaurant setting, as compared to the general attitude measures. The results also indicated that green buyers who were engaged in purchasing green products will continue to dine at green restaurants in the future.

The finding provides an insight to the restaurant operators to access the feasibility of entering in the green market.

Although the predictive power of physiological factors such as environmental values, attitudes and behavior on the pro-environment-related behavior has been researched extensively in the past, very limited studies had investigated those factors simultaneously in the context of IN.

Some luxury restaurants might be hesitant to adopt new environmentally friendly initiatives due to worries that consumers might have concerns about how these changes might affect them. The purpose of this study is to investigate consumers’ intentions to dine at luxury restaurants when new environmentally friendly practices are implemented, considering the influence of trust and perceived risks.

Building on information integration theory and protection motivation theory, this research proposes its model and hypotheses. To test the proposed hypotheses, 441 participants were recruited through a non-probability purposive sampling method.

The results show that perceived risks (i.e. perceived functional risk, perceived financial risk, perceived hedonic risk and perceived self-image risk) significantly affect consumers’ consumption intentions. Furthermore, consumers’ trust in luxury restaurants will partially moderate the effects of perceived risks on consumption intentions.

This study offers empirical support for the proposition that implementing new environmentally friendly practices can affect consumers’ dining intentions in a negative way. Suggestions on how to mitigate the effect of perceived risks are discussed.

The results of this research contribute to the hospitality literature in three ways. First, this study is one of the few to report that luxury restaurants should take consumers’ perceptions of risk into account before initiating new environmentally friendly procedures. Second, it confirms that perceived risks will lower consumers’ luxury restaurant consumption intentions. Third, consumers’ trust in luxury restaurants can partially moderate the influences of perceived risks on consumption intentions.

Today’s consumers are aware of restaurants’ effects on the environment and pressure them to implement green practices. As restaurant success largely depends on how employees meet customer expectations, employee green creative behavior (EGCB) is critical. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how to enhance EGCB by integrating a comprehensive set of three-dimensional components: external, organizational and individual factors.

Data analysis was conducted using responses from full-time employees in the US restaurant industry. The PROCESS macro was used to test the direct and indirect relationships between the study variables. A series of mediation analyzes were conducted to investigate the mediation effects of “restaurant ethical standards” and “employee green passion” on their relationships to “customer pressure” and EGCB.

The results verified a direct effect of “customer pressure” on “restaurant ethical standards” and EGCB. The study also demonstrated positive direct relationships of “restaurant ethical standards” – “employee green passion” and “employee green passion” – EGCB. The result showed that “restaurant ethical standards” and “employee green passion” sequentially explained the partial impact of “customer pressure” on EGCB.

The study recommends that restaurant managers acknowledge growing customer environmentalism and prepare to address their customers’ stricter green requirements. Restaurants need to review their ethical standards on a regular basis to meet rising customer pressure. The study also offers empirical evidence regarding the importance of selecting employees who are passionate about sustainability and empowering them to encourage their green creative behavior.

Although past studies have introduced various determinants of employee creative behavior, they have mainly focused on organizational and individual-level factors but have ignored a critical external factor, which is customer pressure. The study addresses this research gap by investigating the interrelationships between customer pressure and EGCB through restaurant ethical standards (organizational-level) and employee green passion (individual-level).

The purpose of this study was to explore influences of review-related information on topical proportions and the pattern of word appearances in each topic (topical content) using structural topic model (STM).

For 173,607 Yelp.com reviews written in 2005-2016, STM-based topic modeling was applied with inclusion of covariates in addition to traditional statistical analyses.

Differences in topic prevalence and topical contents were found between certified green and non-certified restaurants. Customers’ recognition in sustainable food topics were changed over time.

This study demonstrates the application of STM for the systematic analysis of a large amount of text data.

Limited study in the hospitality literature examined the influence of review-level metadata on topic and term estimation. Through topic modeling, customers’ natural responses toward green practices were identified.

本研究旨在通过结构性话题建模（STM）方法以开拓评论性内容对于话题组成和词条构成的影响。

本论文采用 173，607 份 Yelp.com 在 2015 至 2016 年间的评论内容为样本，STM 分析结合共变量形成话题性建模。

话题趋势和话题内容的不同存在于认证过的绿色餐馆与非认证的绿色餐馆中。消费者对于可持续性的食物话题兴趣随着时间而改变。

本研究对 STM 相关大规模文本型数据的系统分析方法给与启示。

在酒店管理文献中很少有文章研究评论性元数据对于话题和词条预估的影响。通过话题建模，消费者对于绿色措施的反馈获得了梳理和确认。