THE IMPACT OF TRUST AND DEMOGRAPHIC VALUES ON CUSTOMER PURCHASE INTENTIONS TOWARDS GREEN HOTELS

Abstract

Green hotels are eco-friendly hotels that implement environmental protection measures to protect nature. These hotels apply practices that are considered as environmentally friendly initiatives that aim to eliminate the negative impact on the environment. Although protecting the environment has become increasingly discussed, adopting environmentally friendly behaviours still poses a challenge to most people due to issues like lack of interest. This study explores how trust and demographic variables affect customer purchase intentions towards green hotels in Sabah, Malaysia. A quantitative survey with 329 respondents, which consist of domestic travellers in Sabah was undertaken. Empirical analysis using SPSS was utilised to examine the identified relationships among the variables. The result showed that there is a significant relationship between trust and customer purchase intentions based on the outcomes from the linear regression analyses done. Furthermore, the study showed that age, income and education positively influenced customer purchase intentions, while gender demonstrated a negative impact. These findings will be enlightening to the hotel industry players by giving insightful data that will assist them in developing effective marketing techniques personalised to customer profiles and levels of trust, consequently fulfilling the ever-changing wants of domestic travellers.