Recommending green hotels to travel agencies' customers

This research note examines travel agency salespeople’s environmentally-friendly behavior (i.e., recommending environmentally-friendly hotels to travel agency’s customers) in a business to-consumer context. In tourism and hospitality industries, the impact of hotels on the environment has attracted the attention of scholars (Chan & Wong, 2006; Chen & Peng, 2012; Han, Hsu, & Sheu, 2010; Kim & Han, 2010). Scholars have generally agreed that consumers’ understanding of the importance of environmental issues is an important factor that can affect their behavior (Chen & Peng, 2012; Nisbet, Zelenski, & Murphy, 2009; Ong & Musa, 2012). Nevertheless, the current tourism literature has mainly focused on tourists’ own environmentally-friendly behavior. The influence of tourism service providers is still under-explored. In particular, travel agency salespeople may have an influential role, especially when customers search for and evaluate tourism product information (Fu, Richards, Hughes, & Jones, 2010). Up to date, the factors that contribute to salespeople’s environmentally-friendly behaviors still need further investigation. To narrow the gaps in the tourism literature, this study analyzes how salespeople’s environmental concern’s influences on their environmentally-friendly behavior, which is to recommend green hotels to potential customers. Moreover, the moderating effect of green hotel knowledge will be investigated. A green hotel is an environmentally-friendly lodging property that follows ecologically sound programs / practices (Han et al., 2010 cited in Chen & Peng, 2012).