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This research uses the institutional theory perspective to better understand the social dynamics of the European Union (EU) tourism policy and its directions. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the processes, content and outcomes of EU tourism policy.

A thorough literature review involving a critical discourse analysis on the regulative, normative and cultural elements of institutionalisation improves our understanding of the EU policy, in terms of its processes, content and outcomes. Therefore, this paper explores how the European institutions have incrementally legitimised tourism policy among Member States.

Over the years, the EU’s policies were intended to enhance the European single market whilst supporting the growth of the industrial competitiveness, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. This has inevitably led to the development of new policies in the realms of tourism.

This contribution has identified a gap in academic research, as it reports about the evolution of EU tourism policy and on the conditions of how it has been planned, organised and implemented. It also exposes the challenges of institutionalising tourism policy in intergovernmental institutions.

This paper aims to examine the choices made by the hotel industry about what to include, and who to be accountable to, in their sustainability reports; a process defined as materiality assessment.

The paper is based on the findings of semi-structured interviews with eight sustainability managers (from eight of the world’s 50 largest hotel groups) to explore their understanding of, and use of, materiality and any barriers to its uptake and eight industry sustainability experts to assess the general industry-wide application of materiality.

Sustainability managers from large hotel groups are evasive when disclosing their materiality criteria, their decision-making processes and how they aggregate stakeholder feedback; they limit their disclosure to the reporting process. Sustainability managers are disempowered, with limited resources, time, knowledge and skills to apply to materiality assessment. Experts confirm that hotel groups are unsystematic and opaque about their decision-making and how they control their materiality assessments.

Materiality assessment is concealed from the public and may be constructed around business imperatives with high managerial capture. The hospitality industry needs to improve its sustainability reporting by examining how it defines and applies materiality and by addressing the barriers identified, if it is to demonstrate an enduring commitment to sustainability and organisational legitimacy.

This study addresses the limited knowledge of how hotel groups undertake materiality assessments. It identifies gaps in the conception and application of materiality by pinpointing barriers to its uptake and recommending areas in need of further research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of customers’ environmental concerns, customers’ perceptions of a hotel’s environmental practices and of the hotels’ environmentally friendly images, on customers’ willingness to pay a price premium to stay at environmentally friendly hotels.

The theoretical framework comprises both social identity theory and value-belief-norm theory. The data were collected through a survey of 454 customers staying at eco-friendly hotels in Spain. The research model is tested by using a structural equation modelling approach.

The findings illustrate that customers’ environmental concerns have a greater explanatory value on their willingness to pay a price premium than do their perceptions of the hotels’ environmental practices. Furthermore, these causal relationships are similar in magnitude when considering the mediating effects of the hotels’ eco-friendly image and the environmental practices.

The empirical findings provide managers with a better understanding of how customers’ environmental concerns and their own sense of identification with environmentally friendly hotels influence customers’ behavioural intentions towards willingness to pay a premium.

The paper contributes to the literature by highlighting those cognitive processes that influence the customers’ willingness to pay a price premium to stay at environmentally friendly hotels. Hence, the study provides valuable information to hotel managers.

This research considers new and unexplored explanations of why consumers continue to engage in environmentally damaging, fast fashion consumption. It explains why rational arguments alone do not prevent fast fashion consumption or encourage consumers to move toward greater adoption of sustainable fashion consumption behaviours.

This research compared the effects of a “neutral” control and an “intrasexual rivalry” experimental condition on: (1) likelihood to buy, and (2) willingness to pay, of frequent female fast fashion shoppers (N = 184).

Women use fast fashion as a conspicuous signal to other women, although this is not necessarily why they waste fast fashion purchases. Mating motives appear to produce a significant increase in fast fashion buying behaviour with women feeling intrasexual pressure to engage in consumption, and utilising consumption themselves as a self-promotion strategy.

Retailers tackling wasteful fast fashion consumption can demonstrate that sustainable consumption provides a superior conspicuous signal to fast fashion consumption, instead of solely using rational messaging.

Grounded in evolutionary psychology, this study uses three theories of intrasexual rivalry, conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste to understand how both the volume and variety of fast fashion consumed are used as conspicuous signals in a mate attraction context.

This study examines the direct effect of outcome message frames (gain vs loss) on cause involvement and the moderating roles of consumers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) scepticism and biospheric values. Furthermore, the authors analyse (1) the effects of gain-framed messages on consumer attitudes towards an environmental cause (i.e. the use of reusable coffee cups) and towards the company promoting the cause (a coffee shop chain); (2) how consumer attitudes towards the cause affect their attitudes towards the company; and (3) how consumer attitudes towards both the cause and the company affect their behavioural intentions towards both the cause and the company.

Using a 2 × 1 scenario-based, experimental design with a gain vs loss stimuli, Study 1 (n = 466) examines the moderating effects of CSR scepticism and biospheric values on the relationship between message framing and consumer cause involvement. Using gain-framed stimuli, Study 2 (n = 958) analyses the effects of cause involvement variations on attitudes and behaviours, through structural equation modelling.

Gain-framed messages are more effective than loss-framed messages at increasing cause involvement in consumers. Both CSR scepticism and biospheric values moderate the relationship between gain-framed messages and cause involvement. Cause involvement enhances consumer attitudes towards both the cause and the company promoting it, while company attitudes towards a cause positively influence consumers' behavioural intentions.

This study recommends that environmental CSR advertising managers should use gain-framed messages to positively influence consumer cause involvement.

The purpose of the study was to examine the relative importance of corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) in comparison to standard, price, duration, destination, brand and disruption using choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC).

CBC was used as the data collection survey technique, and counts analysis for preference and hierarchical Bayes estimation (HB) for importance levels data analysis methods, from Sawtooth Software Inc.

Results show that 2:1 Royal Caribbean Cruise Line cruise consumers prefer companies with CSER policies and practices. However, their actual product choice selection of cruise package attributes revealed that consumers overall placed less importance on CSER when choosing cruises. Experienced consumers were more brand image-conscious than those new to cruising, and consumers who were less price-sensitive were most willing to choose companies with CSER policies and practices.

The information provided is specifically on “what” cruise consumer preferences and importance attributes are but does not explicitly explain “why” the respondents made the choices they did. This was at the time a limitation of the software used to conduct the study.

The Conjoint Analysis CBC Sawtooth Software pre-2014 version choice simulators do not facilitate questions that provide answers as to “why” respondents make the choices they do in the market simulations.

The knowledge contribution is of value to both academia and industry, as the quantitative statistical data on the cruise consumers’ choice preferences are of value in understanding and identifying solutions/approaches towards “opening the bottleneck” that exists between private sector sustainable development practices and consumer lifestyle changes.

This was the first time that CBC/HB was applied within academia to examine the cruise consumers’ choice preferences in a UK context and also the first time that CSER was applied as a direct variable in a cruise package to determine the preference and important values of a brand in a consumer behaviour decision-making context.

This study aims to examine the current state of the research activities of scholars in the hospitality and tourism field by analyzing the first 20 years of the new millennium.

Longitudinal analyses using 14,229 journal articles as data source were realized by adopting BibExcel, Gephi and VOSviewer network analysis software packages.

This study provides a comprehensive overview of the hospitality and tourism research based on authorship and social network analysis, with patterns of prolific authors compared over four distinct periods.

The hospitality and tourism academic society is clearly illustrated by tracing academic publication activities across 20 years in the new millennium. In addition, this study provides a guide for scholars to search for multidisciplinary collaboration opportunities. Government agencies and non-governmental organisations can also benefit from this study by identifying appropriate review panel members when making decisions about hospitality- and tourism-related proposals.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use bibliometric analysis in assessing research published in leading hospitality and tourism journals across the four breakout periods in the new millennium.

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally impacted upon the travel supply chain and influenced tourist behaviours. This is further evidenced in corporate and travel firm concerns surrounding future sales and profitability. Instilling confidence amongst tourists is therefore imperative to ensure consumers continue purchasing the holiday product. However, the management of an intangible and relatively unknown virus has compounded the already difficult management of the tourist experience.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The chapter reviews the impact of COVID-19 in the context of the tourism supply chain and the safety and security measures implemented in destinations. The financial implications of safety and security measures are acknowledged with management challenges and solutions discussed. The chapter underpins its analysis with the use of regional, national and international examples.

Findings: Contingency strategies ranging from quarantine to health and safety certification have been deployed by national governments and regional authorities. However, the complexity of the tourism product and the range of stakeholders involved in its make-up and distribution compounds the ability to ensure safety from the virus.

Practical Implications: The review acknowledges limitations of health and safety measures in the field and forwards alternative suggestions that can be adopted by tourism destinations and enterprises.

Originality/Value: The chapter is novel in that it reviews health and safety and financial security practices in the field as they relate to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article introduces the ethical reasons for tourist destinations to follow market‐led or supply‐oriented strategies when developing tourism as an economic option. Economic, environmental and social issues will be used to exemplify the consequences of either pure strategy. The article argues that there is a need to take into account the public sector, the private sector, non‐profit organizations and the residents in order to design sustainable tourism strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether volunteer tourism organisations are prepared to learn from feedback on the quality of their responsibility communications, and consider whether analysis and communication of results can influence market improvement.

A purposive sample of five influential website pages of eight volunteer tourism organisations are scored across 19 responsible voluntourism criteria, and compared against the results of two years previously.

The authors report mixed results on how communicating results has encouraged change and industry improvement in responsibility, based on previous research that showed responsibility to be communicated inconsistently at best, potentially greenwashing at worst, across organisations, product types and responsible values.

The paper applies sustainability marketing literature to explain the changes in responsibility communication performance using an innovative tool to benchmark and audit responsibility in online marketing content and providing insight into how best practice marketing necessitates responsible operations. This paper considers whether and how, when presented with evidence, organisations choose to improve for a more responsible voluntourism offer.

The paper is original in providing a practical, industry-informed analysis of the reasons why volunteer operators communicate in the way they do, and the ability to influence their communications to be more reliable, in the context of increased criticism for shallow volunteering. This experiment allows industry associations and lobby groups to influence industry practice based on the evidence that improved communications are possible when specific, tailored advice is provided.