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The purpose of this paper is to test links from hotel general managers’ (GMs’) environmental commitment to hotel companies’ environmental management capabilities and then to hotel companies’ involvement in environmental practices. The secondary goal of this study is to identify the common, critical environmental management capabilities in the lodging business context.

In total, 172 GMs, working for hotels affiliated with two state lodging associations located in the northwest region of the USA, participated in this study. GMs’ responses were gathered via an online survey. The structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model.

The results show that GMs’ environmental commitment affects their firms’ involvement in environmental practices both directly (GMs’ commitment and firms’ involvement) and indirectly via firms’ environmental management capabilities (GMs’ commitment, firms’ capabilities and firms’ involvement). The five common, critical hotel environmental management capabilities are identified: employee training, communicating environmental initiatives to guests, knowledge and skills to implement environmental practices, capital to invest in environmental management and support from employees.

The hotel industry-specific environmental management capabilities enhance hotel practitioners’ understanding of the critical components for the success of hotel environmental programs and assist GMs to effectively prepare and operate their hotels’ environmental initiatives.

This study demonstrates the essential role of individual actors, specifically hotel GMs, in firms’ environmental involvement, and advances our understanding of hotel environmental management in hospitality literature.

This quasi-experimental study aimed to investigate, drawing upon influential discounting behavior theory and cognition – affect – behavior (C-A-B) paradigm, consumers’ reactions to the phenomenon of “greenwashing” in the lodging industry. More specifically, this paper proposed and tested a theoretical model that examined whether recognizing the ulterior motive caused consumer skepticism about hotels’ environmental claims, which in turn influenced consumers’ intention to participate in linen reuse program and intention to revisit the hotel. Additionally, the moderating effects of ecological concern on the relationship between skepticism and intention to participate and between skepticism and intention to revisit were examined.

A quasi-experimental design was used with two conditions (control vs ulterior motive) employing staff members of a US public university as study participants. In total, 638 useful responses were received.

The results of this study revealed that an ulterior motive of hotels’ environmental claims evoked consumer skepticism, which, in turn, negatively influenced consumers’ intention to participate in the linen reuse program and intention to revisit the hotel. Skepticism was found to partially mediate the relationships between ulterior motive and intention to participate and between ulterior motive and intention to revisit. Consumers’ ecological concern was not found to moderate the relationship between skepticism and intention to participate in the linen reuse program and skepticism and intention to revisit the hotel. In addition, a significant positive direct effect between ecological concern and intention to participate and a non-significant effect between ecological concern and revisit intention were revealed.

Focus on consumers’ response to the ulterior motive of environmental claims advances an understanding of consumers’ attitudes and perceptions about hotels’ green practices.

Findings suggest that hotels need to be watchful so that consumers do not become skeptical. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that managers do everything possible to give customers no room for doubt. Hoteliers need to spend more effort in installing comprehensive green programs and make true green claims by keeping the potential consequences of greenwashing in mind. Hoteliers also need to seek out third-party certifications that require the hotel to meet certain standards, which will help ensure credibility in the eyes of consumers.

Hospitality literature has seldom explored this gray area of green marketing, and, in this regard, this study serves as a guide to hoteliers and researchers alike. The authors thereby anticipate that this study would encourage more research in this often overlooked but highly important area.