Are Values the Roots of Pro-Environmental and/or Pro-Labour Intentions Regarding the Preference or Avoidance of a Hotel?

This paper investigates travellers’ intentions, with regard to preferences for a green and/or ethical hotel, boycotting hotels accused of extreme environmental damages or over-exploitation of workers, and sharing relevant information on social media. Questioning the claim that intentions to prefer a green hotel are based mainly or even solely on practical criteria, this study focuses on examining the influencing power of values. The Values-Beliefs-Norms model was employed and modified as the New Environmental Paradigm was replaced by climate change risk perception. Personal interviews were conducted with consumers in the urban area of Thessaloniki, Greece, using a structured questionnaire for data collection. Area sampling, in combination with quota sampling, in terms of gender and age, was used. Results provided that egoistic and altruistic values were excluded from the final structural model, and just biospheric values indicated a statistically significant positive relationship with Risk Perception. The other hypothesised consecutive relationships between Biospheric Values (BV), Risk Perception (RP), Awareness of Consequences (AC), Ascription of Responsibility (AR), Personal Norms (PN) and Intentions (Int) were found to be statistically significant and positive. Overall, 80.9% of the variance in Intentions was explained, while Personal Norms indicated the stronger impact on Intentions among all other relationships in the chain. Eventually, theoretical and practical implications, as well as future research directions, are suggested.