Green and Environmental Marketing Strategies and Ethical Consumption: Evidence from the Tourism Sector

Abstract

Sustainable business in the hospitality sector should be designed and restructured to offer services meant to satisfy the customers aware of the ethical behavior toward environment. Green environmental marketing strategies (GES) are based on the desire of the customers to access hospitality services with zero or a less negative impact with the adaptation of greening activities. Therefore, this research aims to explore the direct effects of green environmental strategies on ethical consumption and the indirect influence of green marketing and its mediating effect between green environmental strategies and ethical consumption links. Additionally, this research also reveals that psychological aspects play the moderating role in the relationship between GES and ethical consumption. The data were collected from a sample of 545 respondents with the support of Saudi tourism companies, and a structural equation model was used to process them. The findings confirm the positive relationship between green environmental strategy and ethical consumption. The outcomes also corroborate that green marketing is interplaying between green environmental strategy and ethical consumption. In addition, this study validates that psychological aspects strengthen the link between GES and ethical consumption. This study adds to the knowledge in the literature through emphasizing the crucial role of psychological factors in improving green environmental strategies and developing ethical consumption habits among members to increase ethical consumption among tourism companies. The findings support companies from the hospitality sector implementing green sustainable services, to stimulate ethical consumption and to use their competitive advantage in green marketing strategies.