University-affiliated sustainability badges: Shared identity, tourist perceptions, and hotel manager receptivity

Peter Lewin, , Danyelle, Anna Kristina Zinn, Sarah MacInnes and Sara Dolnicar
Additional contact information
Anna Kristina Zinn: University of Queensland
Sara Dolnicar: The University of Queensland

No 2pv9b_v2, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Hotel sustainability research shows that pro-environmental behaviour‑change interventions are often effective in field experiments, but widespread adoption by hotels remains limited. One possible explanation is that hotels lack external recognition that would make adopting these measures visible to guests and rewarding to managers. This study investigates whether university-affiliated sustainability badges could serve as a recognition mechanism, testing their effectiveness across two studies drawing on Signalling Theory and Social Identity Theory. In an online experiment (N=975), prospective hotel guests viewed simulated hotel booking pages featuring one of the four badge options, or no badge, across budget, mid-range, and luxury hotel pricing segments. All badge variations increased perceived hotel sustainability and guests’ sense of belonging to a community of environmentally conscious travellers (group identification). Badges did not trigger negative emotions, but the university affiliated logo did not perform better than a generic environmental logo on almost all measures, suggesting these effects are based on the presence of any badge, rather than the university partnership specifically. Semi-structured interviews with ten hotel managers found conditional receptivity to university-affiliated badges, primarily through a sense of shared values and community orientation with the partnering institution (collective values) rather than the badge’s function as a credibility signal. These findings suggest that collective values and shared identities, rather than signalling, may be the more promising mechanism for engaging hotels and guests around sustainability initiatives, and offer an encouraging direction for potential university-hotel partnerships that may translate into the future implementation of pro-environmental behaviour change interventions.

Date: 2026-09-18
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6aac9540ccf6fd951c390dd1/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:2pv9b_v2

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/2pv9b_v2

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().